


sorry that i can't believe (that anybody ever really starts to fall in love with me)

by serenascampbell



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/M, Fluff, bisexual solidarity, cuteness, frieda playing cupid, i love these two, lowkey angst, maternal jac, paternal fletch, slowburn, smut is a possibility, the only f/m i claim, will be mainly fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-15 14:34:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 46,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13615395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenascampbell/pseuds/serenascampbell
Summary: fletch + jac, stems from what i think the record scene next week will be like. multichap, not sure how long, no upload schedule bc berena multichap is my priority, enjoy !!!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hannah the only other flac stan that there is](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hannah+the+only+other+flac+stan+that+there+is).



She was going to kill Petrenko. At least, she was going to make her life a living hell for the rest of her days.

“You’re welcome,” she had drawled in that hideously suspicious tone of hers, and at the time, she had actually been eager to hear Fletcher talk about something other than that blasted record. The plan that the Slav had been hatching had only become apparent when she had walked into her office and found Fletcher sat. In her chair.

The dastardly expression on his face told her that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

She had demanded to know what he was doing in her chair, and why had that hideously smug grin on his face. She had thought that Frieda had simply given him the wrong edition of the vinyl again and she was going to have to deal with weeks more of complaining. Lord knows it was something worse.

In his hand was a vinyl cover. Plain black. No indication of whether the edition was right or wrong. He lifted it up in the air and the smugness on his face shifted to curiosity.

True to form, she pushed shut the door and stalked across the room, snatching it out of his hand and pulling the LP out. It only took a glance for her to know.

It was the right edition. Jimmy Winston and His Reflections. Sorry She’s Mine. 1966.

It was _the_ copy. The copy covered in Emma’s wax crayon doodles. The copy that had cracked straight down the middle on Tuesday and had now been rather finely rebuilt with superglue. The copy that she had thrown in the bin.

“Anything to tell me, Ms Naylor?” Fletch enquired, arching his eyebrow for effect.

Jac looked at him and she wondered where he is hiding the anger in his face. Normally, it sits in the crinkle between his eyebrows or in the twitch of his jaw; today, she could not locate it.

She cast her eyes down to the vinyl, slipped it back into the cover, out of sight. She hated herself for this, and the unfamiliar feeling of guilt which has never dared approach her settled in the pit of her stomach.

Fletch could see the shame in her, the way her shoulders sagged beneath the weight of a poor excuse. His posture eased and he stood, stepped into her space and was surprised when she does not try to move away from him.

“I didn’t mean for it to get damaged, truly.” The words are soft and shy, unlike any that Fletch has heard leave the ever-brusque woman’s mouth before.

“Wait, you took this?” Fletch snapped as the realisation hits him. Jac flinches, not enough to notice, but they were so close now that he felt it. His tone softened. “Why?”

There was a silence that drowns them both in its iciness. There were no words, and yet, she kept looking for them.

“Maybe I thought you needed it. You needed something to help you grieve Raf so I did something stupid. I tried to help you, and we know I am awful at helping. I screwed up, and I will pay for the last copy on the planet if I have to so that you don’t hold this against me because I really wasn’t trying to ruin your little project,” Jac defended, back in Naylor mode even though they both knew she didn’t need to be.

In her mind, she promised herself that she would make it up to him. She would buy the last copy on the planet even if it meant she had to spend every penny she had.  Jac told herself that she would not let her recklessness ruin the life of someone as obnoxiously good as Adrian Fletcher.

He took the record from her and put it down on the desk. She hated him for not being angry at her in that moment.

“It’s not about the money. You were right, I did need something, and _this-_ ” he points at the record “is the end of it. I don’t care that I can’t retire early and live off the fortune I would’ve made. Thank you for taking it. Thank you for giving me something to do instead of wallow.”

Jac breathed for what felt like the first time since she stepped into the office. She reached for the edge of the desk and alleviated the pressure weighing down of her still sore leg.

For a moment, they remained like that and it is comfortable, until the e-mail alert of Jac’s computer reminds them both of precisely who they are.

“Well Fletcher, if you aren’t mad at me then I suppose you can go and get on with your job! And let me get on with mine, if you don’t mind,” she suggested; it was almost miraculous to watch the transition for _Jac_ to _Ms Naylor_ happen so quickly _._

He snickered at her, and she rolled her eyes before shooing him out of the way and falling back into her seat. Jac glared impatiently at him, and he snatched up the record and made for the door.

Alone in her office, Naylor wondered what the hell Petrenko had been thinking. The Ukrainian had been doing everything in her power to stay on Jac’s good side recently, remarkably well considering the skill with which she toed the line of attentive yet never brown-nosing.

A very stern conversation would be happening later today. Potentially in theatre, so it was inescapable. Frieda Petrenko was going to be reminded of what it meant to frustrate Jac Naylor.

The relief that washed over her served as a relaxant however. Fletch didn’t hate her, and much as she hated to admit it, that fact significantly improved her day. She thought of how he had so easily forgiven her, how he had thanked her even for trying, so disastrously, to help. He was the only one she really felt she could trust to listen and to care without getting concerned with her well-being, and she was so infinitely grateful for that.

Then she remembered that he had taken the record with him as he left. Why would he do that?


	2. Chapter 2

It was 8:32pm when she paged Fletch to her office, and it was 8:33pm when he knocked on the door and let himself in.

“And what can I do for you today, Ms Naylor?” Fletch teased as he pushed the door closed and crossed the room to her.

She scoffed, reached down under her desk and produced a small silver gift bag. It dangled from her fingers as she waited impatiently for him to take the hint and accept it.

With a creased brow, he took hold of the bag and set it down on the desk, drawing out the thin, black, vinyl cover inside.  His pupils dilated as he slipped it out of the sleeve and saw what it was.

His jaw dropped and he dropped it onto a pile of paperwork before yanking Jac out her chair and forcing her into a tight embrace. He was squealing like an excited child who just got the bike they for from Santa, and she had her hands loosely wrapped around his torso.

“Ow, ow!” She exclaimed sharply as she squeezed her tighter. “Reminder I have a large gaping wound right underneath your left hand. Are you trying to break me in two?”

He released her from his firm hold yet did not step back.

“I can’t believe you found it. I’ve been trying for weeks and nobody on Earth had a copy of this stupid record, then you find it in a matter of hours! Overachiever,” he joked.

What she would not tell him, was the truth of how she had come to possess the record. She would not tell him of her confrontation with Frieda for giving him the original copy. She would not tell him that the registrar had handed her the vinyl on their way out of surgery without a word. She would not tell him that the beaming smile on his face right now was not hers to behold.

“Well, I made you a promise, and I am nothing if not a man of my word,” he offered as he attacked every inch of her face with kisses, peppering her pale skin with them as he enunciated each peck with a loud, overexaggerated ‘mwah’ sound.

Eventually, he gave up, just slightly out of breath, and she laughed at him.

A silence fell over the pair. For a moment, Jac met his eyes with hers and wondered if somewhere, behind the hideously checked shirt he was wearing and the messy stubble, was a man she could be attracted to.  

Jac became hyperaware of the dark room and the few inches between them. Instinct kicked in. She cleared her throat.

“Well we should listen to it, the final piece of the puzzle, and then this will be finished and we can put our grief to bed,” Fletch reasoned, unafraid to confront her feelings as well as his own.

“And how, bright spark, do you suggest we do that? We have no player,” she pointed out, and stepping backwards just slightly as she spoke.

“YouTube it! It’s not the same, but it’s what it means that really matters. Come on, humour me!”

He pouted at her with puppy-dog eyes and while she wouldn’t normally give into him, she still had the taste of guilt stuck in her teeth from earlier.

She returned to her desk, sat and opened a YouTube tab on her browser, typed in the song title and clicked on it.

The song started to play and she stood, making a beeline for the door.

“Enjoy your little dance party, and remember to lock the door on your way out. I’ll see you tomorrow, Fletch,” she finished, pausing at the coat stand.

After that silence, that awkward moment of wondering whether what Becki had suggested, what Frieda had implied earlier was true, she needed to breathe air that wasn’t filtered through his heady presence.

“Not a chance, Naylor. This is _our_ little dance party and you are the guest of honour!” He approached her, tapping his feet to the rhythm of the music and outstretched his hands to her. “Come on, you know you wanna.”

He danced towards her and she gawped at him, wondering if he was entirely serious in what he was doing. There was no way she was dancing, especially not to some hideous Mod track which was older than her, and especially not with _him_.

The song was truly pretty awful. Fletch was jiving enthusiastically to it and trying to coax Jac to join him. It was not happening, but he was trying never the less. He truly was the prodigal puppy. You could kick him a dozen times and he would _still_ come crawling back to try again.

Simply to humour him, she started to bounce on her heels slightly. ‘Dancing’ certainly wasn’t the word she would use for it, but it was all he was getting, and he ought to be grateful.

Laughing at her lack of enthusiasm, Fletch grabbed her hand and spun her around. He pulled her towards him and continued to hum along to the music as he dragged her through the ‘dance’.

She loosened up, if only marginally, and allowed him to pull her around the office like a ragdoll. The way he moved his hips made her snigger, he truly was the archetypal Dad-dancer. She let him have his fun and as soon as the music stopped, she excused herself and headed for the door.

“Wait, Jac!” Fletch called, stopping her in her tracks as she pulled the door open. “Thank you for this, really, you know what it means.”

As she left the ward that day, and headed home to her daughter, she tried to bite back the smile that curled up on her lips like a piece of paper which refused to lay flat. This evening had been nothing, it had been her repaying a friend for a mistake she had made. She repeated that conclusion to herself over and over again…when had he become a friend?


	3. Chapter 3

A couple of weeks passed and Jac saw less of Fletch than usual. She bumped into him on the ward occasionally, and they would sometimes see each other at the creche at the end of a shift, but they had barely said a word to each other since that day in her office.

She had to wonder whether that moment, the moment that had been replaying in her head every spare second she had, had been the same for him as it had for her.

It was a horrible day today and all she wanted was for him to come to her office and ask her if she was okay and annoy her with reassurance and to tell her that she needed to look after herself. She missed the overbearing and frustrating presence he had.

She had lost one of her long-term patients, one of the few that actually managed to not get on her nerves, and it had really set the tone for the rest of the time. She had been at odds with Serena all day arguing about time management, and she had just received a phone call from the creche saying that Emma had been involved in some sort of an altercation with one of the other children and she was needed down there.

Ignoring the pounding headache she had, she made her way downstairs to the creche.

She smoothed down her scrubs before stepping inside and almost being bowled over by her daughter running across the room and wrapping herself tightly around Jac’s legs. Jac outstretched her arms and pulled the toddler up to sit on her hip as she walked over to Alison, the first adult she recognised.

“Jac, I’m glad you’re here!” Alison exclaimed genuinely, before glancing towards Emma with a wince. “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

Jac let Emma down and told her to go and play with her friends for a little while. Emma skulked off sadly, but did as she was told all the same.  It was only once Jac stepped inside of the office and saw Fletch sat there that she started to worry.

Concerned as she was, she took the seat beside him silently and waited to hear what Alison had to say. They knew by now not to waste her time with petty squabbles if they could help it.

“It appears that Emma hit Theo today, and while both parties are entirely fine, we thought this should be brought to your attention since the two are usually quite inseparable.”

Jac allowed her eyes to fall shut as she processed, wondering what on Earth had happened in the world of toddlers that had ensured her day become even worse. Turning her head, she looked at Fletch and saw the concern that settled on his face.

“Do we know why?” Fletch questioned.

“Something to do with you, Fletch, deserving better than Jac…” Alison began. “Now I know it’s none of my business, but if the dynamics at home are changing, that can be unsettling for children as young as Emma and Theo. Is there anything that might have triggered this?”

“Like what? You don’t’ mean…No!” Jac snapped as she realised what Alison was implying. In her mind, she was thinking, at least if it were true, she would be getting something out of it but on the outside, she appeared suitably enraged. “I’m sure this is just children being children. We’ll each speak to our kids privately and that will the end of it, clear?”

Alison nodded timidly. Jac stood and left the office, making a beeline for Emma. The girl was clearly aware that her mother had been told what was happened, she had her lips pursed shyly and made no move to try and hug her mother this time around.

“You don’t hit people, not unless they hit you first. We’ll talk about this at home, Emma, understand me?” Jac stated firmly, receiving a shy nod from her daughter. “Apologise to Theo and have a good afternoon, Mummy’ll see you later.”

She crossed to the door and made her way to the lift, unenthused at the thought of four flights of stairs.

“Hold it!” A familiar voice called as she pressed the button for floor six, she nonchalantly put the toe of her shoe in the door to stop it from closing and rolled her eyes as Fletch sprinted into the lift. “Cheers.”

Silently, she stepped back and waited for the doors to shut. He tapped his foot against the ground impatiently and she hated this, whatever it was between them that meant he felt so awkward around her. All she wanted right now was for him to make a snide comment about how much Emma reminded him of her mother.

She bit her lip, wondering if she should say something.

“So, I heard about Kenny Reddington. That’s awful news. How did the family take it?” Fletch opened, filling the awkwardness with his casual conversation almost skilfully.

“Pretty okay. Upset, of course, but they had so much longer with him than they ever expected to. I gave them the grief counsellor’s details, just in case, but I think they’ll be fine,” Jac answered and it was the most honest Fletch had seen her since that evening with the record.

He turned to offer her a gentle smile, knew somewhere deep inside himself that she needed it. Even if he was pretending that they were mere colleagues who barely knew each other, his heart couldn’t pretend not to hear the way her voice was clipped at the end, the way it always did when she was trying to sound perfectly okay.

The lift arrived and she stepped out without another word to get on with her day.

Fletch watched after her and wondered if she had even noticed his absence from her life. He had tried to keep her close, but after _that_ moment, he needed a while to himself. He was running out of excuses to see her anyway.

He would keep her at arm’s length, always ready to step right back up if she needed him to. He just had to hope she found reason.


	4. Chapter 4

It was the end of the day shift and almost everybody had left. Jac was about to leave when she heard the knock on her door and saw Fletcher through the glass, bit back a smile as she told him to come in.

She glanced in his direction as he entered the office and waited for him to speak.

“Everything okay?” Fletch asked almost casually, and she arched an eyebrow at him expectantly. “Just went down to pick up Theo and saw that Emma’s still there. Alison said she’s normally gone by 7 so I thought I’d come and see if Jonny was supposed to pick her up tonight or something,”

Jac snapped up out of her office chair and paced towards the door. Fletch took her by the shoulders and held her still, meeting her eyes and seeing everything she was trying to hide there.

“What’s going on, Jac? Talk to me.” She hated him for this, for knowing her better than she ever wanted him too. He could tell something was wrong simply by catching a glimpse of her and he simply could not leave her to wallow in peace.

“Fletch, I’m fine. I need to go and get my daughter. I lost track of time, that’s all,” she tried to excuse. The deceit in her voice was obvious even to her, and she knew he wouldn’t be so easily fooled. “What happened earlier with Emma and Theo just put me in a bad mood, that’s it…really.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to figure out the calculated and magnificent woman in front of him and coming up blanks. She simply made no sense, and it was intoxicating.

“Why? You know they’ll forget about it by tomorrow. It doesn’t mean anything to them,” he reasoned, softening his hold on her shoulders and sliding his thumb across her collarbone, to-and-fro, again and again. “Not what Theo said? Oh Jac, that was just kids being kids. You know they don’t have any filter on what they say. He probably just heard me moaning to Evie about work and took it the wrong way.”

Jac dropped her gaze downward so she didn’t have to look at him. When he was right about her, he had a shade of pity in his eyes that she spent her entire life trying to forget.

  Fletch lifted her chin with his forefinger, forced her to look at him.

“Because it’s true, and I’m worried that one day, when she’s old enough, Emma’s going to come home from creche or from Jonny’s or from school and she’s going to ask why I’m so mean to everybody, and I’m not going to have an answer. I don’t want her to end up like me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of who I am and where I’ve ended up in life, but I’m not proud of the person that my life has turned me into.”

It was the most honest she had been with him. Perhaps it was because she was tired. Perhaps it was because of all the stress of today. Perhaps it was because he was Fletch and she knew she could be honest with him.

“Don’t you ever say that. Emma is never going to ask you that and Emma is never going to resent you or stop loving you or do any of the things you are scared of her doing. You’re incredible and I hate that you’ve been through so much but I will be proud of the person you are today even if you won’t!” Fletch responded confidently, moving his hand up so that his thumb could stroke her cheekbone. “And Theo doesn’t know what he’s talking about, if anything, you deserve better than me.”

His eyes were locked on hers.

Her gaze wandered to his lips for less than a moment, then back up. His followed the same path. This was yet another moment between the two of them.

“I should, uh, go and get Emma,” Jac blurted out.

Yet another moment between the two of them ruined by Jac’s overzealous instincts.  

 She slipped past him, grabbed her coat from the stand and pulled it on. He remained in the doorway, waiting to be shooed away. She stepped out first and he followed, moving out of her way so that she could lock the door before the two of them headed wordlessly to the stairwell.

Emma would be wondering where she was. Alison would ask her if Jonny was supposed to come and collect their daughter this evening. Jac would be so hideously embarrassed at having forgotten.

“You know I’m right, don’t you?” Fletch offered, keeping pace with her even as she tried to hurry away from his question. “You can’t pretend you haven’t done everything you can for that little girl, and you can’t pretend you aren’t one of the kindest people in this hospital, even if you are dreadful at showing it.”

“Fletcher, if you try to flatter me anymore, I will push you down these stairs. We both have better things to be doing than discussing my phantom kindness,” she responded sharply as she pulled open the door to the fourth floor and headed towards the creche.

As she rounded the corner, she scooped a waiting Emma up in her arms and gave her a kiss on the cheek. A quick apology to Alison about the time and she was on her way down the car park.

She wondered if this might put things back to normal. If tomorrow, Fletch would walk onto the ward and tell her that she looked ready to terrorise a nurse or do her next elective blindfolded. Maybe they could, or perhaps she was just kidding herself.

Fletch had been there because she needed him to be, that was just Fletch being Fletch. It didn’t mean he was going to walk back into her life, and she couldn’t well spend the rest of her life pretending to need his support every second of the day just because she missed his company. Or could she?


	5. Chapter 5

Operation Dependency was fully underway by 9o’clock the following morning.

She dropped off Emma at creche in a hurry, made sure that she had everything with her that she would need for the weekend, and headed upstairs to Darwin.

“Alright, Jac! Good morning?” Fletch greeted as he passed her with that chirpy smile of his.

“Would be better if people learned how to do their jobs!” She responded in true Naylor form, going straight into her office and flummoxing down on the sofa.

Sure enough, before she could even let her eyes fall shut, he was at the door.

“Anything the matter? Still on track with the health and safety paperwork I need finished by the end of the day?” He enquired, looking down at his phone as he spoke, obviously having finally mastered the skill of multitasking.

Jac realised in that very moment that there was an actual issue to deal with now. She’d been putting off that paperwork for weeks and there were about 60 pages for her to go through. Operation Dependency would have to be put on hold until she could rake herself through that amount of useless waffle.

“It will be handed to you before my shift is over, don’t worry your pretty little head with it.”

He nodded before turning and rushing off onto the ward, ever the busy bee. She exhaled dramatically before forcing herself to move to the desk and start on the paperwork. There was no way she was going to get through it by the end of the shift unless she gave Frieda the septal myectomy unassisted, which she could, but she would never hear the end of it.

Needs must. She paged Petrenko to her office and the Slav was there within a matter of minutes.

“You want the septal myectomy to yourself this afternoon?” She offered casually, not lifting her eyes from her paperwork, still scrawling information down as quickly as she could.

“Yes,” Frieda responded with a slight reluctance in her tone that Jac decided to ignore.

“Brilliant, it’s all yours. I’ve got too much to do today, and it’s time you get some theatre hours on your own. No more kiddy reins,” she finished, pleased to hear her door close behind an enthusiastic Frieda within seconds.

The next three hours were spent with her head buried in a pile of nonsense about protocols that she would never need to use but nevertheless had to be made aware of. It was absolutely mind-numbing and yet, here she was, doing exactly what Fletch wanted her to be doing because she had actually stooped so low as to wanting to keep him happy.

Frieda knocked on her door and entered, in the same Darwin scrubs as always, with a readiness flowing through her being.

“I’m just headed to scrub in. I stole one of Keller’s F1s to scrub in with me, hope that’s alright,” she offered with a grin. “I’ll give you an update once I’m out.”

By the time Frieda knocked on her door again, she only had fifteen pages left and about four hours left on shift. Surgery had gone well, no post-op concerns, and Frieda was going to write up the notes.

It was pretty late by the time that she turned the last page and signed it off. She looked at her computer’s clock, eleven minutes until her shift ended.

Almost as if summoned, Fletch knocked on her office door with an expectant grin and stepped inside without waiting for permission.

“I may have RSI but at least you have your precious paperwork now, wouldn’t want you tripping over in the workplace and not knowing what to do, would we, snowflake!” She teased as she nudged the hefty pile towards him and he gratefully picked it up.

“You’re a legend, Jac Naylor, truly a legend!” He exclaimed, blowing a kiss in her direction. “I owe you a drink, fancy Albie’s?”

She arched an eyebrow at him sceptically. On very few occasions had she been found in Albies’, normally only when someone she actually liked was leaving, or when she had been physically dragged there by Sacha. Fletch was fully aware of that and yet he had suggested it anyway.

“I have a bottle of whiskey that a patient sent me for Christmas. Yes to drinks, no to Albies’,” Jac reasoned with a smirk, reaching to her bottom desk drawer and pulling it open. Out came an 18-year Glenfiddich, and she brandished it proudly.

Fletch gave a smug nod.

“Let me go drop these with HR and make sure the nurses don’t need me for anything.”

As he made his way down the corridor, he thanked the Lord above that he had asked Evie to babysit tonight in case he was home late. The universe owed him a few good coincidences.

He returned to Jac’s office to find her sprawled out on the sofa with the bottle in her hand, obviously a few swigs ahead of him already. She smiled broadly at him, watched as he pushed the door shut and pulled her legs up underneath herself so there was space for him beside her.

They drank and they talked and they drank and they laughed and they drank and Jac drifted asleep with her legs laid across Fletch. It was almost 10:30, Evie would probably be wondering where he was but at least the rest of the kids would be in bed by now.

Carefully, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket without moving Jac too much and looked at his messages. Sure enough:

_Evie: What time you coming home?_

_Evie: Everything okay?_

_Evie: The kids are in bed now. Love you xxx_

He tapped out a quick explanation that he’d had a few drinks and was going to stay in the on-call room, that he’d be back in the morning and that he’d make pancakes to make up for it.

As slowly as he could, he lifted Jac’s legs and slid out from beneath them, setting them back down on the couch and pulling the throw that decorated the back of it over her. She didn’t stir, so he paused for a moment to look at her sleeping form and wondered how she could ever be the same person that stormed around so angrily during the day. He didn’t know.

Shyly, he stooped to press a kiss against her hairline, lingering for just a moment before stepping out of the office and heading for the nearest on-call room. Tonight had been like old times, if slightly more intense, so now things could go back to normal, right?


	6. Chapter 6

She woke the next morning to Fletch gently shaking her shoulder and she wondered if there was a better way in all the world to be woken. In fact, there is: Fletch could be holding coffee and like a God send, he is.

“Morning sleepy head,” he greeted merrily, and she rolled her eyes at how chirpy he can be even when he’s hungover. “Someone looks delightful today.”

Grumbling, she rolled away from him and pulled the throw over her head. Only to have it yanked away from her.

“Fletcher, you have yet to see the wrath of a hungover Jac Naylor. I assure you, it is not something you _want_ to see.” Wordlessly, she reached out a hand for the coffee and he handed it to her without a moment’s thought. “At least you came equipped with caffeine.”

She sat up with her knees pressed tight against her chest and the throw held up under the chin. The bright light of the room made her squint but eventually her eyes adjusted and his face came into focus, looking miraculously acceptable for someone who had consumed far too much alcohol last night.

“Enjoying the view?” He teased as she sipped at his own coffee. “Now, don’t kill me, but it’s only 7o’clock. I thought, since it’s both our days off, I could treat you to breakfast in Pulses and then drive you home so you can recover from your hangover in the comfort of your own home. Rather than being found by one of my unsuspecting nurses and put on fluids as some cruel form of revenge that I would never condone.”

Jac stared at him for a long while as she processed the fact that he had dared to wake her at 7am, and longer still as she wondered why she hadn’t thrown her steaming coffee in his face yet.

“For the record, the only reason you are not being killed is because you offered me food.”

She drew her phone from her pocket and checked it quickly: no missed messages. Wiping the underneath of each eye for yesterday’s mascara and running her fingers through her hair to make sure she looked at least vaguely acceptable, she stood and took a deep breath in, becoming immediately aware of how strongly she smelt of whiskey.

Her handbag was on the floor beside her, she pulled out a bottle of Dior perfume and doused herself in enough to cause anybody with lungs an asthma attack.

Fletch wheezed sarcastically and waited for her to ready herself for the big, wide world of Holby City Hospital on a Saturday morning. Eventually she took her coat from the stand and pulled it on, hoping it could mask the not-so-divine blend of Dior and Glenfiddich.

Avoiding everybody on the ward was a skill that Jac had mastered years ago, so she had no trouble making it to the lift without a single person speaking to her. Fletch, however, didn’t have the same luck.

“Popularity has its drawbacks, huh?” Jac joked as they entered the lift and watched the doors close. “Bet you wish everyone was too scared to say hi to you now.”

Fletch scoffed at her. He’d never really understood how anybody could be scared of her. He could see right through that façade she put up and he was baffled that other people couldn’t.

Jac’s head was banging and she was wondering how much they actually drank last night. She regarded herself as quite the heavyweight and yet here was, at 7am, wishing she could curl up in a ball and never see the sun again.

“Another coffee and a croissant, I’m guessing?” Fletch asked as they arrived at the ground floor and the lift doors opened; he received a slow nod. “Go grab us a table then, I’ll be there in a minute.”

She traipsed to the nearest table and flopped down into the chair, allowing her head to rest upon the table and praying that Fletch remembered to bring enough butter to feed a small family. He arrived three minutes later with a generous amount of butter.

“Don’t you have children to feed?” Jac enquired sarcastically, spreading a thick layer of butter on her croissant and taking a large, flaky bite.

“I also have a wonderful fourteen-year-old who has yet to discover the terrible decision that is alcohol, you’ll have one of your own pretty soon!” Fletch replied enthusiastically as he bit into his bacon sandwich.

Jac laughed, she knew full well that Emma was unlikely to be a wonderful fourteen-year-old who helped around the house, she would follow in her mother’s footsteps and be too rebellious for her own good.

She wolfed down the croissant eagerly and chugged the coffee like a woman who knew no water. Cravings satisfied, her next and final destination was bed.

Fletch offered to drive her home and said he would pick her up on his way to work tomorrow if she didn’t want to get a taxi. He dropped their rubbish into the bin and guided her towards the car; the hideous people carrier was ultimately the only model that would do the school run with two of four kids still in car seats.

Jac dropped into the passenger seat without a word. Letting her head fall back against the support and shutting her eyes. At some point in the journey, she drifted off to the low sounds of the early morning radio and started to snore so quietly Fletch barely could’ve noticed if the car wasn’t so silent.

He drove slowly, intentionally missing a few junctions just so he didn’t have to wake her yet. When he finally pulled up outside her house, he wondered whether she got lonely there alone without Emma on the weekends. She hated to admit it but she wasn’t the people-hater that she liked to pretend to be.

For a few minutes, he sat there and let her rest beside him. Her presence was so quiet, so calming compared with the equally wonderful though thoroughly overwhelming presence of his brood.

Reaching cautiously towards her, he set his hand upon her shoulder and shook her awake gently.

“We’re outside,” he explained, and she immediately snapped upright and reached for her seatbelt in a hurry. She thanked him for ensuring her safe return home and got out of the car at the curb.

She would go and get into bed, and she expected Fletch would do the exact same. All she hoped was that she hadn’t embarrassed herself too much last night. He’d been drunk too, hadn’t he?


	7. Chapter 7

When Fletch pulled up outside his house, he was pleased to see that it had yet to be burned down. He took a minute to himself, trying to sober himself that final bit before he entered the house.

As he forced himself to get out of the car and lock the door behind him, he wondered whether Jac was going to wake up at any point today. He knew he wished he didn’t have to, but he had four kids in the house who were going to make a nap absolutely impossible.

“M’home!” He called as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside, pleased to see that at least from where he was standing, nothing had been broken. He trusted Evie to keep things in order, he’d relied on her far too many times to have any doubts, but Mikey was just as reckless as ever and Evie control someone only three years younger than her all that well.

Curiously, he poked his head into the living room and found nobody there, though the television was on. Down the hallway to the kitchen, inside he found Evie looking in the cereal cupboard and Ella sat colouring at the dining table.

“Alright girls, where are the lads at?” He greeted enthusiastically, walking over and pressing a kiss atop the crown of Ella’s head.

“Mikey went to the park with Thomas. I thought you would’ve said yes if you were here so I let him go. Theo is in his bedroom playing with LEGO, I was going to go and check on him at half past but you can do it now. I am going to eat breakfast instead,” Evie explained as she drew out both the Coco Pops and the Cookie Crisp boxes and poured them both into the same bowl.

He rolled his eyes at her and headed upstairs to check on his youngest. The boy was found surrounded by a huge pile of LEGO pieces, he was still wearing his pyjamas but it was a Saturday and Fletch didn’t have the energy to care.

He pulled the boy up into his arms and carried him downstairs to colour with his sister. Evie ate enough cereal to feed an army before asking if she could go to her room and listen to music.

“Of course you can, Ev’. Thank you for last night, you know I don’t normally ask it of you and I’m proud of you for being so mature,” Fletch offered with a smile.

“Speaking of, I want an explanation at lunch of who on Earth you went out drinking with!” Evie called, already halfway up the stairs by the time she finished her sentence.

He sat at the table with the kids and let himself zone out while they occupied themselves. All he wanted right now was a nap, but at least he would sleep like a baby tonight.

Soon enough, Evie returned in search of food and Fletch sent her to find Mikey and bring him back for lunch. He set to work constructing sandwiches for each of the kids;

Cheese and Pickle for Evie

Ham and Cheese for Mikey

Tuna and Cucumber for Ella

Just Cucumber for Theo.

 

By the time that Evie and Mikey had returned, he had set five plates upon the table and was impatiently waiting for them to arrive so he could wolf down his cheese and pickle.

“So, Dad, details please. Who is the lucky individual that won your company last night?” Evie opened casually, biting back her curiosity.

“It was just Jac, you know Ms Naylor? We had a few too many is all and I wasn’t in any state to drive home,” he admitted almost as if he expected them to leave it at that and go on with their day.

“JACULA!” Theo yelled through a mouthful of cucumber sandwich. Fletch huffed loudly and noticed the wide-eyed expression Evie was facing him with.

“You got drunk with Jac Naylor, the only person in the entire hospital that NOBODY likes?” Evie questioned, almost unbelieving in her tone. “Why?”

“Theo, I thought I told you Jacula was a banned word, remember?” He chastised before turning his attention to his eldest. “She’s not as bad as you think she is. She just wants everyone to think that’s perfect, and she doesn’t know that approachable doesn’t mean imperfect yet. She’s great at her job, Evie, you’d like her if you got to know her.”

“Serena’s good at her job and nobody’s scared of her!” Evie countered as she popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth and chewed.

“Don’t tell _her_ that,” Fletch joked, sniggering to himself. “Don’t worry about who I’m spending my time with anyway. Don’t you have homework to do, Miss Future Surgeon?”

 Eventually the children all dispersed to their rooms and Theo went down for his afternoon nap, closely followed by a very exhausted Fletch. He crashed out on the couch with BBC News playing in the background and got forty winks before being woken by Evie telling him that it was almost dinner time.

He groaned in response and his bones creaked as he sat up, blinking rapidly to wake himself up.

“Why don’t we get takeaway tonight?” He suggested, fully aware that nobody was ever going to say no to pizza in the Fletcher household. Evie nodded enthusiastically at him. “Go grab the menu from the kitchen drawer then and write down what everybody wants.”

Stretching his arms out over his head, his mind wandered to Jac and wondered whether she had woken yet. He would call her after dinner to check on her and make sure she was, slowly but surely, recovering.

Evie raced back into the room with a scrap piece of paper in one hand and the landline in the other.

The pizza came quickly, only about fifteen minutes wait before they were all sat at the table with five pizza boxes and two bags of chips. In his clouded, hungover state, Fletch had failed to calculate the amount of leftovers this would create.

At 7:45pm, he tucked Theo and Ella into bed and made his way down to an empty living room. Drawing his phone from his back pocket, he scrolled through his contacts to Jac’s number and dialled it.

“Hello?” Jac answered almost immediately.

“Hey, just calling to check up on you and make sure you’ve not died of alcohol poisoning,” he greeted warmly, leaning back into the sofa as he heard her chuckle.

“You’re not that lucky I’m afraid,” she retorted, “and I recovered pretty quickly you’ll be pleased to hear. Woke up at noon feeling like a new woman and went for a run this afternoon.”

“You disgust me, Naylor,” Fletch replied sarcastically, “I will be seeing you at 7:45 sharp tomorrow then, and perhaps you won’t fall asleep in my car this time.”

“Don’t be late, Fletcher. I don’t handle tardiness well.” She finished sharply and hung up the phone before he could say another word.

So were they back to being the old Jac and Fletch now, at each other’s throat’s 24/7 in the most endearing of ways?


	8. Chapter 8

Weeks passed, and things were back to normal. Fletch made the same terrible jokes and Jac bit back with the same snide comments and they settled back into the comfortable routine that had grown from the shooting.

They would see each other at work. They would see each other at creche. Theo and Emma were best friends again. Everything was going entirely normally.

“No, I’m not going to pay you weekend rates because it’s a Friday night and that’s _basically the weekend._ Who do you think I am? You already charge me five times what anybody else would, and frankly, you don’t deserve the amount of money I put into hiring you. You’re fired!” Jac shouted as she hung up the call and dropped her phone onto her desk with an exasperated sigh.

A knock at the door and she braced herself to tell whoever it was to get the hell out of her office. Until she saw who it was and suddenly she felt like her world wasn’t coming apart at the seams right now.

“Everything okay?” Fletch questioned as he stepped inside and closed the door behind himself.

“Everything’s dandy, Fletcher! My life is as stable as it ever has been, and you?” She snarked at him as he crossed the floor and perched on the corner of the desk with a concerned look on his face. “I just fired another babysitter, and I’m pretty sure she was the last one in Holby who I haven’t already tried. Jonny’s going away with his new girlfriend next weekend and I can’t get the time off to look after Emma on Friday night. Sacha’s in the bloody Maldives so he can’t take her for me, and just about everyone else I know hates me. So unless I can produce a magical human being equipped for childcare in the next 48 hours, I’m going to have to leave Emma in my office for four hours.”

Fletch side-lined her tangent, reached and took her left hand to inspect the burn across her knuckles more closely.   

“Tell me you disinfected this, it looks a rather suspicious colour,” he observed, glancing up to meet her eyes and seeing the disdain there. “Stop panicking. Evie’ll be happy to do it, she looks my other three a couple times a week anyway, one more won’t be any trouble. Now that Emma is sorted, answer my question.”

“You didn’t ask me a question, Adrian, but yes, of course I disinfected it. And if you’re sure Evie won’t mine an additional bundle of adrenaline on her Friday night then you are a Godsend.”

Fletch rolled his eyes at her, brought her knuckles to his lip and placed a perfunctory kiss against them. Jac glared at him, shaking her head disapprovingly and tugged her hand from his grip before returning to her work.

“I’ll have her collected with Theo at five thirty then, shall I?” Fletch suggested as he stood up and made for the door.

“Thank you Fletcher, I owe you my life!” Jac answered in a faux-dramatic tone, focusing on her paperwork with a refreshing sense of calmness.

When Friday arrived, Jac delivered Emma to creche at the start of her shift and explained to her that she would be going home with Theo for a few hours and that Mummy would be picking her up later on. Emma seemed entirely unfazed by the idea and simply hugged Jac goodbye before toddling off to find her friends.

The majority of her shift went entirely normally, it was only when she bumped into Fletch at around 6:30 and was reminded that her daughter was at his house that things began to feel a little odd. She put it to the back of her mind, she had seen Evie on a number of occasions and she knew the girl was entirely capable of keeping a girl as well-behaved as Emma under control for a few hours.

“You’ve got that face on,” Fletch stated as he stepped into her office.

“Which face would that be then?”

“The ‘what if my daughter has been sold on the black market because I left her with a fourteen year old’ face. Don’t worry, Evie is perfectly capable of looking after Emma, and I finish at 10 so I’ll be there soon enough to conduct a rescue mission should something have gone terribly wrong. You won’t have a clue, your little one will be returned to you in one piece at midnight on the dot.”

Jac winced at him, a hint of guilt colouring her cheeks at his accuracy.

She knew that everything would be fine. Not because she could rationalise and tell herself that it would be, but because Fletch had said it would be and Fletch had not yet let her down. She settled into a groove for the rest of her shift and got an awful lot done, only looking at her phone once midnight came and she was preparing to leave.

On her lockscreen, read a text:

_Fletch: Emma’s fast asleep. Evie says she crashed out on Theo’s bed so she just left her there. Doesn’t seem worth it for you to trek over here now to pick her up. Come and get her in the morning instead if you like, let me know._

She tapped out a quick reply:

_Jac: If you’re sure it’s no trouble. I’ll come get at 7 on my way into work. Thankyou._

As she slipped on her coat, she heard the text tone in her pocket and looked down:

_Fletch: No point coming to get her that early. I start at 12 so I’ll bring her in with me and Theo if it’s alright._

_Jac: Okay, if you don’t mind. See you tomorrow._

It wasn’t until she was down at her car that she heard the tone again and pulled out her phone:

_Fletch: Goodnight x_

She drove home and went to sleep that knowledge without a shadow of a doubt that Emma was safe and happy right now. She was with a friend, and she was in the care of Jac’s friend. This was what friends did for each other, right?


	9. Chapter 9

“Tomorrow’s your day off, right?” Fletch asked as he walked into Jac’s office unannounced.

She drew her glasses from her eyes and set them down on the desk in front of her, arching an eyebrow at how brave he had become around her now, breaking every rule that she had ever set in stone.

“Yes, Fletcher. What do you want?”

“Well, Mikey brought up our Sunday plans in front of Emma, and now everyone, Emma included, want her to come along. It’s only to the zoo, nothing very extravagant but nevertheless, I was wondering if the pair of you would like to come with us,” Fletch offered kindly, an eagerness to his tone that made Jac feel she wasn’t allowed to say no.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude upon your family day out, and I’m on call. I shouldn’t really be doing anything that means I can’t be called in,” Jac reasoned with a sincerity that rarely seen in her.

“First things first, I invited you both, you are not intruding, you are enhancing. Secondly, if you get called in, Emma can stay with us and you can come and collect her when you finally get released from this prison we call a day job,” Fletch suggested and that dashing grin on his face was enough to persuade her that it would be a fun day out for Emma if nothing else.

They agreed upon a time, went to their respective homes to sleep, woke up, and drove to Holby City Zoo at the agreed upon time.

“MEMA!” Theo’s familiar shout greeted, guiding Jac and Emma to the Fletcher family. Emma and Theo held hands as they toddled towards the ticket booth, and Jac and Fletch both pulled out their wallets at the same time.

“Let me, Jac. I’m the one who dragged you out on your day off to be sneezed on my camels,” Fletch reasoned.

“Nope, it’s your family day out and we invaded upon it,” she retorted and he knew he wasn’t stubborn enough to beat her at this game.

“Dutch?” Fletch suggested lightly. “I pay mine, you pay yours?”

“That’s not how Dutch works, Adrian. I pay three and a half, you pay three and a half,” Jac patronised, glaring at him. “And before you break out the ‘I have more kids than you’ card, Theo is attached to Emma right now, so he counts as a Naylor and Evie’s going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon so I definitely get her too.”

Fletch rolled his eyes and handed over enough cash for three and a half tickets while Jac handed over the other fifty percent.

The ticket guy grumpily handed over two adult and five child tickets before letting them through the turnstiles. Theo, Emma, and Ella were told to always keep hold of each other and always stay in one of the grown-ups’ sight. Mikey and Evie were given free rein and told to meet at the elephants in half an hour if they wanted to go off alone.

“You know you truly are the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Fletch reminded Jac as they walked towards the aviary.

“I’m almost certain you’ve told me that before, but thank you for the reminder,” the redhead joked as they stepped inside of the building.

Mikey was already out of sight, and the youngsters were all pressed against the glass of the peacock enclosure, but Evie was only a few feet ahead of them.

Jac didn’t know much about the girl, she’d only seen her a couple of times but she knew that she wanted to be a surgeon and she knew that Serena and Fletch both believed she was capable of it. She slowly approached the teenager, leaving Fletch a few steps behind her with his eyes firmly planted on the kids.

“Hey Evie, I haven’t had a proper chance to introduce myself. I’m Jac Naylor. I just wanted to thank you for looking after Emma on Friday night for me, it really helped me out,”Jac greeted with the same tone she used speaking to Emma.

“Oh, that’s no trouble. She’s really sweet, and when you’ve had to look after Mikey, a toddler’s nothing in comparison,” Evie answered and Jac let herself laugh in response. “Can I ask…when you were buying the tickets to get in…why did you say I was going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon? I haven’t even started to think about specialising yet, should I be? Had you decided by fourteen?”

“Evie, calm down!” Jac interrupted with raised eyebrows. “Don’t worry about specialising. I didn’t think about it until I was at least twenty. I said you were going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon because we’re the best in the business, and I know your Dad wouldn’t let his daughter be anything as heinous as a general surgeon.”

Evie looked down at her feet, biting her lip, and Jac knew she had said something to upset her. Cautiously, Jac put her arm around Evie’s shoulder and pulled the girl into her side.

“General surgeons get to help everyone though. What if Dad got a brain tumour and because I was a cardiothoracic surgeon, I couldn’t help him?” Evie suggested and Jac stretched a sad smile across her face.

“If your Dad gets a brain tumour, I have the best neurosurgeon in the country on speed dial and he owes me a few favours. Stop worrying, you have a long way to go before you can think about specialising, okay?”

Evie reluctantly nodded and shrugged Jac off of her so she could walk back towards the younger ones.

Jac bit her lip and glanced over at the scene, her daughter with a big family, and Emma fit right in. It broke her heart a little that she couldn’t give her little girl that, and that she couldn’t give herself that too.

“You okay?” Fletch asked as he approached, taking note of the expression on her face and putting it in the backlog of Jac expressions that he needed to be concerned about. “What was that about with Ev’?”

“Surgeon chat, nothing for you to concern yourself with,” she teased as she started back towards the kids.

The walk through the zoo was rather pleasant, apart from a giraffe dribbling on her which was not the most delightful of experiences. As they reached the last enclosure, Jac paused for a moment and took a deep breath in; perhaps her lungs had a better memory than her mind and she wanted to hold this where it was harder to lose.

“No pager all day, see? The world doesn’t fall apart immediately after you take five minutes to yourself!” Fletch observed with a tone of sarcasm that earned him an elbow in the ribs from Jac. “Back to ours for a late lunch?”


	10. Chapter 10

They made their way out into the car park and started getting into their cars.

“Why don’t I ride with Jac and Emma so Mikey can have the front seat and they’re not all squashed in the back?” Evie suggested, a hopeful smile on her face that reminded Jac so much of her father’s that she nodded without a second thought.

“Alright, see you in a few minutes then,” Fletch finished as he hopped into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut.

Evie took the passenger seat and pulled her seatbelt across her torso, clipping it into place. Jac pulled out of the parking space and turned the radio on, barely audible but there all the same.

“So, are you and Dad dating?” Evie asked nonchalantly and Jac swerved just slightly as her head snapped sideways to face Evie. “Oh don’t act so shocked. Everyone thinks it.”

“And who, precisely, is _everyone?_ ”

“Well, Auntie Serena certainly didn’t say no when I asked her, and all three of the little ones are drawing the pair of you holding hands so they clearly know something we don’t,” Evie responded candidly, glancing back to see Emma, sound asleep in her car seat.

“Your Dad and I aren’t dating, Evie. We’re friends, that’s all,” Jac answered and she was glad that years as a surgeon had given her the poker face of champions because her own doubts around the word ‘friend’ would have been written all over her face.

Evie pursed her lips and took a moment to consider her response. Jac kept her eyes on the road, waiting for the teen to say something.

“You’re either lying to yourself or you’re lying to me. I’ve seen you two together and there isn’t a doubt in my mind, especially not after today,” Evie offers and suddenly Jac feels like the child in the car. “We wouldn’t mind, none of us would. We just want Dad to be happy, so as long as you aren’t going to break Dad’s heart then we’ll welcome you with open arms.”

Jac had to take a moment to process that. She just got invited to fall in love with Adrian Fletcher and it was against all her better judgement that she shook her head and remained focused on the road.

“Evie, your Dad and I are just friends. I don’t know where you’ve got the idea that we might be something more than that from, but it’s not true. And I’m certainly not capable of breaking your Dad’s heart,” Jac answered and it was true, she could never break Fletch’s heart, primarily because it wasn’t hers to break.

They continued to drive and a tense silence fell over the car, it was only when the entered the estate where the Fletcher house was situated that Evie spoke again.

“Whether you are or you aren’t, I want you to promise me that you aren’t going to hurt him. I know the stories about what you’re like, and I don’t believe you’re really like that but a lot of it is based in fact. Joseph, Jonny, Jasmine, it doesn’t seem like you’re very good at keeping the people you love close. I know this seems like I’m being mean or I’m trying to keep you away from him but I’m not, if you want to make him happy then I want you in his life, I just need to hear you promise.”

Jac was baffled by Evie’s words. She hadn’t gotten into the car expecting an ultimatum of any kind and yet here she was.

They turned onto Walsop Street and Jac pulled up onto the drive outside the Fletcher household, right behind the people carrier which had arrived ahead of them. Jac got out of the car and headed to the backseat to extract a napping Emma from her carseat, locking the car before heading for the front door.

“I promise.” Jac finished confidently as she felt the teen’s presence at her side and reached for the door handle, letting herself in.

 Inside, the girls found Fletch trying to put together a picnic of sorts. Jac nudged Emma awake and sat her down at the dinner table, rolling up her sleeves and busying herself with chopping cherry tomatoes.

It didn’t take long to construct between the two of them, especially with Mikey and Evie keeping the kids out of the way. It was remarkable how much faster things happened with two pairs of hands.

By half past two, the seven of them were squeezed around the dining table, digging in to what looked like a lovely lunch.

Everybody was in a good mood, the kids were babbling about the animals they saw, Mikey was enjoying the food, and Evie had an absent smile on her face. Jac had shoved what Evie had said to the back of her mind for now, she would worry about it later, and Fletch was just pleased to have the entire gang in one place for more than five minutes.

The youngsters settled down in the living room in front of an episode of _Peppa Pig_ while Jac and Fletch took on the task of the washing up. Evie and Mikey had both retreated to their bedrooms after far too much time spent being sociable.

“Today was really nice, Emma enjoyed spending some time with kids her own age outside of creche. Thank you again for letting us come along,” Jac offered as she handed Fletch a handful of dry cutlery to be put away.

“Nonsense, Jac. The pair of you are always welcome and I hope you know that,” Fletch responded as he placed the knives and forks one-by-one into their spaces. “I hope you had a good time as well, you know. Not everything is about whether Emma enjoyed herself.”

“Sorry, you’re right, I had a lovely time too. It was nice to spend some time around another adult who I wasn’t either cutting open or telling what to do for once,” Jac admitted, allowing a hint of a smile to creep onto her face. “We should, uh, get going though. I’ll see you tomorrow at work?”

“I’m never anywhere else,” he responded light-heartedly, continuing with his housekeeping as Jac made her way to the living room and removed Emma, much to her dismay, from her spot in front of the television.

As he heard the front door close, he thought about how nice it had been today to see Jac being herself for once and not that shell of herself she pretended to be at work. He hoped to see her again soon. Was this a one-time thing, though?


	11. Chapter 11

It is Wednesday when they speak properly again. Fletch comes to complain at Jac about how she’d managed to upset one of the new nurses.

“Well if she wants to work on my ward, she’s going to need to get a thicker skin because I’m just as mean to everybody else and you know it. It’s not as if I was picking on her because she’s new!” Jac defended as she continued to walk down the corridor with Fletch beside her.

“I know you’re that mean to everybody else but it doesn’t make it any easier for me to handle, Jac. If you want to have at least a few nurses left on this ward, you are going to have to learn to take your frustrations out on somebody else,” Fletch replied, readjusting the knot of his tie dramatically.

“Sorry, Fletcher, you’re no fun anymore because I know I can’t scare you away. The only challenge I have yet to succeed at, you really are a tough cookie,” she joked as they arrived at the scrub room doors. “Tell her I can be a cow, but that it’s almost never _meant_ to upset anybody, do your magic nursing thing. I have a heart to repair.”

Jac entered the scrub room and rinsed her hands. Thinking intently about the operation she was about to perform, she began to work the nail brush across her cuticles and under her nails vigorously. She stood there, her mind wandering through the chest cavity of her patient, for ten minutes before eventually doing a final rinse and heading into theatre.

She had Frieda across the table from her, and the only surgical nurse she could stand at her side. It was a gruelling procedure, five long hours, and she’d already been exhausted when she started.

It seemed like the guy on the table didn’t want to stay alive. They lost him and resuscitated him four times throughout the procedure, and it wasn’t until they were starting to close up that he went down again and Jac started to doubt whether she could save this one.

Twenty-three minutes of CPR. No output. No respiratory effort. No nothing. Time of death: 14:55.

Jac ripped off her surgical gown and shoved it into the bin, snapped off her gloves and went to scrub out.

It hadn’t even upset her, it had just annoyed her. Out of nowhere, her mortality rates were rising, and she was wondering whether she was doing something wrong or this was just a bad month. Whether she liked to admit it or not, medicine was the only thing she was good at and if she didn’t have that anymore, then what was the point.

Ignoring Frieda’s attempts at conversation, Jac excused herself and headed back to her office.

3 weeks and 3 fatalities. It was making her start to doubt herself though she would never say that aloud, not even to herself. It was making her question whether she was losing her touch.

She only got a few minutes to be self-deprecating before Fletch burst in through the door and started bragging about what a brilliant DoN he was and how he deserved a gold medal for his mediating skills.

It took him approximately nineteen seconds of bragging to realise that something was wrong. He furrowed his brow and closed the door, closed out the rest of the world for a minute and Jac had never needed it more.

“What’s happened? Did something go wrong in surgery?” Fletch asked tentatively, only to be met with an absent-minded nod. “You lost him.”

Jac was rapping against the surface of her desk with her fingernails incessantly, eyes focused on the tiny movement of her hand. She hadn’t even looked at Fletch since he walked in the room, hadn’t dared to.

She felt him come close to her, saw his hand come into her line of sight as he reached to cover her hand with his. Fletch’s hand fit over hers like a glove and she wondered if she could hide from the world behind him forever.

It sounded daft. Jac thought she was ridiculous for even thinking it but it was so nice to have someone to rely on, someone who was always there when you needed them and never too hard to reach. Sacha was something else entirely, he was the person who picked her up from her lowest point, but she didn’t trouble him with the little things, not if she could help it.

 Her eyes flicked up meet his.

Here it was, another of those moments, and this time her instincts didn’t ruin it. Well, perhaps they did, but not in quite the same way.

She stood up and was suddenly in his personal space, she reached up with her free hand and grazed the stubble along his jawline with her thumb. She shyly leant towards him and pressed her lips against his chastely; it was all at once entirely thoughtless and yet so full of intent.

It was brief. It was nervous. It was every moment just like this one that she’d stopped in its track.

Jac drew back and met Fletch’s eyes, all she saw there was shock and God knows a Naylor is the greatest pessimist in all the world. She cleared her throat, muttered out an apology, snatched her hand from beneath his and made for the door. Fletch definitely said something, tried to stop her from leaving, but his words made no sense to her as she sped away from him.

She hurried off down the corridor and into the stairwell, bolting from the shame she felt. It hadn’t even been her decision, not consciously at least…her subconscious had ruined things for her this time. No more friendship, no more favours, no more petty squabbles, she was going to have to avoid him until this all blew over, potentially for the rest of their shared lives.

Why had she even done it, how could she have been so stupid as to think that he could want someone like her?


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> these are literally first drafts going straight up without beta or editing so apologies for typos or inconsistencies ,,, hope you're enjoying

For the next few days, she keeps to herself and tries to avoid all contact with Fletch. She doesn’t ask if Evie can look after Emma. She doesn’t collect Emma from the creche and sends Frieda to pick her up instead. She doesn’t answer his pages. She doesn’t answer his texts.

Fletch is thoroughly considerate. He gives her the space she needs, and he doesn’t push her to let him back in because not pushing Jac Naylor is a lesson he learnt a long time ago.

When he tried to speak to her about a deadline for some funding applications, she literally pretended he wasn’t there. Even though the entire ward was already aware of the fresh tension between the two of them, he tried to make it less obvious and instead asked Frieda to communicate with her about it.

“Just tell her that they need to be in next Friday or the ward will get absolutely nothing in the way of grants,” Fletch relayed to the impatient Slav. Frieda was glaring at him as though he was a complete and utter idiot for not sticking it out and forcing Jac to speak to him, but Frieda didn’t know Jac like he did.

She was acting like a child. She was being everything that she hated in other people but all she wanted to do right now was pretend that it had never happened.

He is in a bad mood for the time being. The kids notice but he tells them it is work stress and they seem to accept it. It is only when Serena invites him out for a drink that he starts to wonder whether his poker face is what it used to be.

“Fletch!” Serena greeted with a smile as he approached _their_ table in Albie’s. “I went to the liberty of getting you a pint.”

He offered a warm grin in return and sat down, sipping the foam from the top of his glass.

“How’s Ms. Wolfe? How’s Jason? How’s acting CEO?” She can see straight through him, she always has.

“Everything is just as well as it was when you asked me this morning, Fletch. You know why we’re here. You’ve been moping around like a complete sap and I would like to know why,” Serena demanded in a no-nonsense tone. “It’s not the kids, is it? Evie hasn’t mentioned anything being off at home, not to me at least.”

“Serena, everything’s okay. Stop worrying about me, I know you think that I’m still struggling with Raf and I’m letting things get on top of me but I’m not, I promise,” he offered in a sincere tone, and he was almost ashamed of himself for having dealt with Raf’s death so well.

The conversation shifted and things were somewhat casual for the first couple of drinks, it was only when the room started to sway a little that Serena got up the nerve to ask again.

Luckily, it was a quiet night so there was no chance of anybody overhearing what was said, not that it would really go anywhere. In the rumour mill that is Holby City Hospital, Albie’s in a safe zone. What is said within these walls will not escape them.

“It’s Naylor, okay?” Fletch admitted with a huff. “I thought things were going okay and we were mates and she started to trust me. Then she kissed me, please note who kissed who. And now, she’s pretending that I don’t exist and avoiding me at all costs.”

“Wait, you went from ‘mates’ to Jac kissing you, that’s a bit of a jump. Do you want mates or do you want kissing? They’re quite different things, Fletcher,” Serena pointed out, words slightly slurred and she finished off her fourth glass of Shiraz.

“She’s Jac Naylor, I don’t know a person alive who doesn’t want to be kissing her, present company included. I never expected it to happen though, she’s Jac, she’s attracted to big powerful men with money, not nurses who are fathers-of-four,” Fletch exclaimed, smacking his forehead against the table with a thud. “I don’t know how to fix it, Serena. What did Bernie do after she ruined everything and moved to Ukraine?”

Serena scoffed. Nobody quite knew the details of how Bernie and Serena came to be, simply because everything from that part of their lives was a little messy. Nobody knew that Serena had made the first move, and then run. Fletch certainly didn’t have a clue that in this scenario, she was Jac.

“Talk to her. It is all I can recommend, tell her how you feel, tell her you want her back in your life. Stop being a coward about it and expecting her to come and apologise for being scared. She’s Jac Naylor, if she isn’t being her confident self then she needs someone to talk to her.”

 Serena, especially drunk Serena, was queen of giving advice whether it be good or bad. Fletch accepted her words gratefully before diverting the topic to something less serious. The two ended up falling into a taxi just after midnight and heading first to Serena’s, then to Fletch’s.

It was Saturday night. Tomorrow was his day off. Jac was working 6-4.

Tomorrow afternoon, he would go to her house. He would speak to her in a place where she couldn’t just walk away from him and he would fix whatever was going on between them.

It didn’t matter if she wanted to forget the kiss, he could live with that. It didn’t matter if she wanted them to get married now, he could very much live with that. The one and only scenario with which he could not live, was one without her in it.

He was almost ashamed that he had fallen for her charm so easily, she was the woman that everyone in Holby wished they could have and here he was, falling for her like all the poor souls who came before him.

Jac wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever, he knew full well that somewhere underneath it all, she needed him too. Tomorrow would settle things one way or another. It couldn’t go that badly, right?

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

It was 5:13 when he pulled up outside. It was 5:21 when he found the courage to get out of the car and walk to the front door. It was 5:24 when he knocked.

“What are you doing here?” Jac demanded as she yanked open the door.

“Oh, so I haven’t become invisible. I was getting worried for a while there,” he answered sarcastically and there is no humour in his voice. “You don’t get to pretend I don’t exist, Jac.”

“Oh really? I don’t get to? And since when have you had any jurisdiction of what I do and do not do?” Jac questioned with wide eyes. “Get inside, the neighbours’ll talk.”

Fletch wordlessly stepped over the threshold, watched as she locked the door, and followed her through to the kitchen. She stood, leaning against the marble-topped island and glares expectantly at him.

“Whether you want to pretend that Wednesday happened or not, you don’t get to cut me out of your life. I don’t care what alienated type of entitlement you think you’ve got, presuming that you can just pretend I don’t exist anymore, it’s not that easy and I will not make it any easier for you.”

“Fletcher, when you became my friend or whatever you are, someone that wanted to listen to my woes and help me out with my daughter and be a shoulder to cry. When you became that, you knew the deal. I told you in that prison of a hospital bed, you are the only one I had yet to scare away and it took me a while, well done for sticking it out as long as you did, it’s a testament to your character, but your time is up now.”

Jac adopted that patronising nasal tone she usually uses when she is trying to prove someone wrong and she knows she doesn’t have the answers. Fletch was not shaken by it, he had heard it a thousand times and he knew it was a defence mechanism.

“You aren’t going to scare me away, Jac. I’ve told you a dozen times, you aren’t as scary as you think,” Fletch reminded her and it sounded almost like a promise.

He closed the gap between them, just slightly, barely noticeable.

“I think you should leave. I don’t want to hurt you, and whether you believe it or not, I am trying to be as kind as possible. Sometimes people just aren’t made to be in each other’s lives,” Jac conceded and the emotion in her voice was hard to hide.

“Jac, you are one of less than fifteen people on this planet that I actually care about and I can ensure you that those people do not get to leave my life without a fight. I am going to let you run away from me just because you’re scared I might actually realise you aren’t the Ice Queen!” Fletch’s admission took Jac aback, she braced herself against the counter and furrowed her brow. He’d accused her of being scared, that was a risky business.

She stared at him with a fire in her eyes that slightly made him want to run from her, but more overwhelmingly made him want to hold her until she realised she didn’t have to cast everybody out of her life.

In her head, Jac counted quickly. She had five; _Emma, Joseph, Jonny, Jasmine, Fletch_. The only people in the world who she gave a damn about. She shoved that to the back of her mind and focused on what was happening right now.

“I’m not scared, Fletcher. Why on Earth would I be scared of what you think you might find out? For some reason, you think that underneath all _this-_ ” she gestured loosely at herself “-there’s some soft, lovely human being. Well there isn’t, Fletch, and you’ll only be disappointed when you realise that.”

This time, Fletch made no mistake as he stepped into her space and held her head between her palms. Her eyes went wide and she leaned back further into the counter to try and create some space between them.

“Stop lying. You know just as well as I do that there is a heart in there, and I will not let you waste your life away trying to keep up this ridiculous façade when you deserve so much better!” Jac’s body relaxed slightly and she looked up to meet his gaze. “You are incredible, and you can’t scare people into avoiding you. The people who really want to be in your life will never stop trying, they will always come back, no matter how far you push them away.”

Jac’s eyes were watery as she recognised the undeniable honesty in his face. Sometimes she wished she couldn’t read him so easily. Right now, she wished she could persuade herself that he was lying but she couldn’t kid herself.

All he wants to do is kiss her, but he can’t take that risk, can’t scare her off like that. He has made his move, now he must wait.

Her hand moved up and covered his. A whisper of a smile greeted her lips and she tentatively closed the gap between them, pressed her lips to his.

Fletch took a moment to react. He brushed his fingers against her hairline and kissed back, running his tongue against her lower lip.

It felt desperate, like they had been waiting this moment for so long and it had finally arrived. When they parted, Jac did not run as she had last time, she met his gaze with a sense of certainty and smiled.

 “This doesn’t mean I’m going to start being nice to your nurses,” Jac whispered with a smirk.

She dropped her hand down to her side and leant into his left hand where it held her cheek, thumb stroking her cheekbone. A long, comfortable silence sat between them, broken only when Fletch took a step back, realising how long they had both been standing there.

“I should get back to the kids, get started on dinner, but we’ll talk. Tomorrow?” he suggested warmly.

Fletch was sad to leave her, after finally getting her to open up to him if only very slightly. He knew it was for the best though, he couldn’t rush this, couldn’t rush her, not if he wanted things to work out properly.

At the door, he kissed her on the cheek and headed back to his car with a smile. Things were finally working out, and even Jac had to accept that today could’ve gone a lot worse.


	14. Chapter 14

The next day at work, they see each other at the creche in the morning. Fletch approaches her casually and says good morning, considerate enough not to out them to the entire hospital quite this early in the morning.

“Lunch in my office at 1?” Jac suggested nonchalantly, waving to Emma as she reached the door and passed through it.

Fletch was surprised by the offer, had expected her to treat this like any other day and for him to have to force her to acknowledge what yesterday had meant.

“Sure, I’ll get toasties and coffee from Pulses,” he responded with a smile as they made their way towards the lift.

As they stood side by side in the lift, Jac casually dropped her hand to her side and brushed against Fletch’s own. He hooked his pinky around hers with a smug grin and glanced across at her out of the corner of his eye and saw her lip curl slightly.

The lift announced their arrival on the sixth floor and Fletch quickly pulled his hand back to his side. As the doors opened, Fletch headed straight for his office without a second glance. Jac watched him go with a hint of confusion furrowing her brow.

Her morning ran rather smoothly; no hiccoughs, no trouble, no unruly patients causing havoc on her ward. The time moved pretty quickly, mainly due to how busy she was keeping herself. She only caught sight of Fletch a couple of times all morning and caught a fleeting smile from him as he rushed off to a board meeting around 11:30. 

“Keep him on half-hourly obs, I’m going to bury myself in paperwork,” Jac told Frieda as she left her at the nurses’ station with strict instructions to keep an eye on Miss Wendleham.

Fletch knocked on her office door with two paper bags and two coffee cups, letting himself in and nudging the door shut with his bum. Jac snickered at the way he struggled, ultimately dropping everything down on her desk before cracking his knuckles and exhaling a breath of relief.

“On at least three occasions, we were extremely closely to wringing the coffee out of my shirt. Good job I’m used to juggling bedpans for a living, ey?” He joked, picking up one of the paper bags and pulling out the toastie by its corner.

“Move to the sofa, you freak. I don’t think Serena would appreciate breadcrumbs inside all of my monthly reports, do you?” Rolling her eyes, she snatched up the other toastie and the coffee closest to her.

She took the left side, tucking her legs up underneath her and setting the coffee cup on the arm of the chair. Fletch followed her lead and took the other end of the sofa, keeping some space between them as he took a bite.

Jac was surprised by how reserved he was being. This wasn’t at all what she had expected, he was more tactile with her _before_ they kissed…twice. He seemed almost shy and she couldn’t figure out, for the life of her, why.

“Had an alright morning?” Fletch asked awkwardly before filling his mouth with another bite of cheesy goodness.

“It was just like every other morning I’ve had. What is wrong with you?” She questioned rather brashly, narrowing her eyes at him and dropping her hands back to down her lap. “Is this about yesterday? C’mon, you know I’m not the queen of intuition so you’re going to have to tell me.”

Fletch chewed through his mouthful, washing it down with a swig of coffee.

“We’re at work. I’ve seen your attitude to PDA at the best of times and I don’t want to push my luck. We’re taking this at your pace, Jac. I don’t want to push you,” he admitted and she almost laughed at him, he looked a little offended for a split second.

“I’m Jac Naylor, you couldn’t push me if you tried, Adrian,” she interjected, closing the gap between them and meeting his lips with a casual peck. “If you’re doing something that I don’t like, trust me when I tell you that you will know about it.”

Fletch reluctantly reached for her hand and intertwined their fingers, and he calmed at the feeling of a reassuring squeeze.

They returned their attention to their food; Fletch wolfed his down in only a couple of minutes and chugged his coffee eagerly. His lap became Jac’s footstool, her filling the length of the couch as she savoured the delightfully greasy food.

Fletch told her about his morning, an account littered with terrible jokes that made her laugh. Her cheeks were pink and Fletch had probably never seen her look more beautiful than in that moment.

 “I’ve got to approve rotas for the entire hospital so I should probably go and get started on them,” he whined, lifting Jac’s legs while he stood before placing them down where he had been sat. “Dinner on Thursday if I can get Evie to look after the kids?”

This was a step further for the two of them; it was a big jump between kissing and going to dinner. Jac stood up and stepped towards Fletch, straightening his tie for him before meeting his lips with her own briefly.

“Thursday it is, pick somewhere bearable or I’ll waste the entire evening complaining about the food. Now go and keep the ward afloat, will you?” Jac joked, swiping her thumb across his bottom lip.

Fletch smiled, pecked her cheek, and turned to leave the office.

She watched him hurry off onto the ward with a spring in his step and she couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face; he was completely and utterly ridiculous. But here she was, bubbling up inside like a teenage girl waiting for her first date and that was equally ridiculous.

In three days, she would be going on a date with Adrian Fletcher and while that seemed almost entirely unfathomable, she had never been more pleased about anything. Frieda knocked on the door and interrupted her happiness, reminding her of just where she was.


	15. Chapter 15

Thursday evening arrived and as soon as she finished work, Jac changed into a pair of trousers and a blouse that she had been waiting for an excuse to wear. Fletch had given her no details, and so she had hoped for the best and dressed classy.

They had agreed to meet in Pulses, not hiding the fact they were going out after work but still refraining from advertising it. Fletch would drive so that Jac could drink if she wanted to. Emma would stay at Fletch’s again tonight.

“Ready to go?” Fletch greeted as she left the stairwell and found him, leaning against the wall casually.

“No, I thought we’d better stand around for half an hour doing nothing before we go…as long as you don’t mind?” She drawled sarcastically, walking past him and heading for the door.

Over the past few days, they had fallen into the habit of hello and goodbye kisses and it was bizarre not to, but the both of them were hyperaware that there were about ten nurses in the room right now that would spread the information like wildfire.

It wasn’t until they were inside the car, sheltered from prying eyes, that Fletch leant over the gearstick and let his lips meet Jac’s for the first time today. He felt her smile into the kiss and couldn’t help but smile back, drawing away slowly and looking at how marvellous she was.

“So, where are we headed?” She asked curiously, dropping her handbag down into the footwell.

“Somewhere suitably decadent, I assure you,” Fletch replied enticingly, making her ever more impatient to know his plans.

They drove in the comfortable quiet that came at the end of a busy day, and Jac wondered if she would be able to hear Fletch’s heart if only she listened closely enough.

His hand moved to the gearstick and shifted them into fifth, and there it remained. As if it was second nature to her, Jac covered his hand with hers and intertwined their fingers.

They stayed like that until Fletch turned into a parking space on the side of the road in the middle of town and removed the key from the ignition. Jac reached down for her handbag and opened her door before getting out.

Once on the pavement, Jac linked her arm through a waiting Fletch’s and let him guide her a short way to a restaurant she had never visited before. It looked Italian – that was acceptable – and it looked clean – that was acceptable too.

Fletch pulled open the door and followed her through it, being met by a waiter asking if they’d made a reservation.

“It’s under Fletcher,” he answered, following the waiter as they were guided to a small booth. They were left with two menus and a basket of fresh bread. “Up to your standard, Naylor?”

She rolled her eyes at him, taking a seat and flipping open the menu.

The two of them decided on what they wanted. Jac went with a beef ravioli with red pesto. Fletch went with a calzone. A glass of red wine and a glass of tap water were delivered to the table and they were left alone to wait for their food.

“So, Miss Naylor, what do you look for in a potential suitor?” Fletch asked in a demure tone, batting his eyelashes dramatically as he sipped his water.

“Maturity, an understanding of the pressure of my job, and a commanding presence. Well done, you came up trumps!” Jac offered sarcastically as she took a bite of bread. “Okay really though, there’s only one question I ask on first dates; if you could do anything tomorrow, anything you could possibly imagine, what would it be?”

“I would take all the money in the British government right now and I would invest it in the NHS and I would make it an independent organisation that isn’t under government jurisdiction, so they can stop screwing us over.” His answer was poignant and honest and exactly what she had been looking for. “What about you?”

“That isn’t how it works. You don’t get to ask me my own question, come up with your own question!” She retorted childishly, taking another bite out of her bread roll.

It took Fletch a long minute of watching her and wondering what he ought to ask. He observed the way she ate with an elegance that was entirely unparalleled, he noticed how she sipped her wine with the perfect etiquette, he took in every detail.

“Your calzone, Sir,” the waiter interjected as he approached the table and set down the plate in front of Fletch. “and your ravioli, Madam. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

Jac shook her head firmly and the waiter scuttled off awkwardly, leaving them to their food. She picked up her fork and took a bite of ravioli.

“If you could bring one person back to life, who would you pick and why?” Fletch questioned before attacking his calzone with his cutlery.

There was a look of confusion on Jac’s face as she chewed though her mouthful and swallowed, wondering why he had thought to ask it and what he expected her answer to be.

“Jasmine,” she answered simply, “because she had potential and I could’ve helped her become something great.”

Things became far more light-hearted from there; they ate and they laughed and they chatted non-stop. When the bill came, Fletch insisted and for the first time, Jac gave into his wishes.

Stepping back out into the street, it had gotten chilly and the moon had risen entirely. The pavement was painted with milky moonlight and the lights of the buildings spilled down to complete the scene. Jac let a shiver run through her body as she adjusted to the cool weather, only to feel Fletch’s jacket slip around her shoulders without a word.

Jac turned to see Fletch and somehow in that moment, he became the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was a collage of every time he had helped her out at work, every cup of coffee he had brought her when she needed it, every reassuring touch, and every second he had fought to make her believe that he wasn’t going to run.

Almost without thinking about it, she kissed him again and caressed his stubbly jaw. He tasted of tomatoes and toothpaste and something sickly sweet, and she caught his lower lip between her teeth. His arm was still wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her closer as he allowed his tongue to find hers.

They stayed locked in an amorous embrace for some minutes before they were reminded of where they were by a car racing past and they drew back from one another.

Fletch kept his arm around her shoulders as they made the short journey back to the car, watched as she slipped away from his hold and walked around to the passenger’s side.

“Thank you for tonight, Fletcher, truly,” she offered as she pulled the car door closed and reached for her seatbelt. “It was lovely.”

His hand settled just above her knee, a gentle smile on his face as he let this memory set firm in his mind. She took his hand in hers and held it there for some time, if she let go, it meant the night was over and she would have to return to an empty house.


	16. Chapter 16

When she could put it off no longer, Jac released his hand and cleared her throat abruptly.

“Home time?” Fletch suggested glumly, turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the space.

Jac wondered whether there was some way that she could make this night last forever. Her little girl was safe and happy, she was happy and in the company of the only man who had yet to hurt her, nothing could get better than this.

As they drove through the empty streets, there was a tender quiet lingering between them. Jac could hear Fletch’s heavy breathing and it grounded her in a way nothing else could have.

It was hard to believe that these two had been entirely clueless to how compatible they were only a couple of weeks ago, nobody would have guessed it until it actually happened. Jac wondered how Fletch had ever even entered her radar, and then she remembered, he had been everything she needed him to be at the time when she needed him most, and that was enough.

“Jac, we’re here,” he mumbled softly, almost as though he didn’t want her to hear him. She turned to face him and forced a tired smile onto her face.

Her house looked so sad and empty, all the lights turned off and nobody to welcome her home after a long day at work. She used to love this house, she used to pride herself on the way that she decorated it so classily and filled it with beautiful things. Now all she wanted to do was to fill it with people, she hated how empty that house felt.

She was in no hurry to leave the car. It was still pretty early and she trusted that the kids would be perfectly fine under Evie’s watchful eye.

“I know I said it already but thank you for tonight, it…it really was nice,” Jac said softly, undoing her seatbelt with an easy press. “You’re just about the only man I can stand to be around for more than an hour without wanting to throttle you, so well done on that title.”

“What an honour!” Fletch exclaimed, reaching to tuck a stray piece of Jac’s hair behind her ear. “It really was a crackin’ night, and we should do it again sometime. It’s nice to spend some time around another adult for once.”

 Jac pursed her lips and gave a firm nod of agreement, much to Fletch’s joy. She stretched over the gear stick and kissed his cheek lazily, allowing her head to droop and rest her chin upon his shoulder.

Outside the world appeared to be perfectly still, as if they were a bubble of life in a sleeping world. The lights in all of the houses were out and everybody appeared to be in bed, and this moment seemed like it could last for an eternity if they wanted it to.

Perhaps it was the fact that the clock on the dashboard announced that it was eleven o’clock, or maybe it was the soreness developing in Jac’s neck from the awkward angle, but something made her move.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, yes?” Jac asked with a hint of enthusiasm in her tone.

“Stuck in meetings all day but I will be there somewhere, I assure you. I’ll text you though, and we can make plans for dinner number two,” Fletch responded hopefully, a glint in his eye as Jac leant in and gave him a proper kiss.

It lasted longer than it should’ve, and eventually Jac drew away and sniggered at the prospect. The two of them, the Darwin dream team, and here they were making out in a car outside of her house like teenagers.

She grabbed her bag, kissed him one last time, and dragged herself out of the car and to the pavement. As Fletch drove away, she watched from her front gate until he turned the corner at the end of the road and his tail lights fell out of view.

Letting herself into the house, Jac wondered what on Earth she had been thinking. Three large glasses of wine were nothing on their own, but the intoxicating presence of Adrian Fletcher was another fifteen tequila shots.

Kicking off her shoes by the door, she slung her handbag over the bannister and padded up the stairs.

As she pulled herself out of her clothes and into an old t-shirt, she made sure to grab her mobile from her trouser pocket and put it on charge on the bedside cabinet.

It was only after brushing her teeth and climbing into bed that she noticed the text on her lockscreen:

_Fletch: Sweet dreams x_

She rolled her eyes, opening the message and typing out a suitably snarky response:

_Jac: As long as you stay far from my mind, I will. Deliver my daughter in one piece tomorrow. Goodnight x_

Typing that kiss reminded her of another day entirely, potentially one of the worst days of her life so far. It set her on the path to this moment, however, so she couldn’t hate it wholeheartedly.

As she stared at the ceiling, she wondered how she had become to this. Getting shot had somehow let a little of the cruelness leak out of her. Fletch had seen it, even before, and she wondered if it was solely down to him.

Emma had played a part. Everybody knew that Ms Naylor wasn’t quite so scary since she became a mother, but she was still a force to be reckoned with and very much avoided at all costs. The softness that she saved for Emma was kept almost strictly off hospital grounds, but now the lines between personal and public were beginning to blur.

For a long time, all she could do was wriggle around the bed, trying to find a comfortable spot and keep her mind clear enough to let her sleep. There was nothing she could do to shake the prospect of ‘dinner number two’ from her thoughts.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SMUT SMUT SMUT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for how badly written this chapter is, it's been a long time since I wrote f/m smut so it seems I'm a bit out of practice with it, there won't be a lot of it throughout the fic so don't worry, this is a one off.

The next morning, Jac woke up with a burning desire in her gut. Her dreams last night had been rather intense, and her alarm clock’s interruption had left her thoroughly dissatisfied.

She had forced herself out of bed and near-boiled herself in the shower. Still, she could not shake the feeling and a day of being so uncomfortably desirous was not something she wanted to deal with.

For a moment, there was hesitation. Was Fletch ready for this step in their _relationship, or whatever it was_? She was Jac Naylor, there wasn’t a man in the hospital who would turn her down, and she needed this.

Fletch was the one man in all the world that Jac trusted to give her what she needed, and today she needed him.

At 8:50, she pulled into the carpark and took her spot. She saw Fletch’s car a row down and smiled, making her way to the Wyvern Wing entrance.

It wasn’t until 10o’clock that she saw Fletch for the first time that day; a quick hello in the corridor as he raced off to a meeting was all that she got.

“Rhoda Wilson’s been scheduled for 2:30, I have to take a consult on AAU so I’ll see you on the ice,” Frieda drawled as the pair headed towards the nurses’ station.

Jac knew she needed to find Fletch before surgery, she was too tense right now to operate on anybody and she was almost embarrassed that she was letting her work be affected.

Just before noon, Fletch stormed into the office with a vengeance, complaining about the inconsiderate nature of the board members for the hospital staff. Without blinking, Jac grabbed him by the hand and pulled him out of the office, down the corridor, and into the supply cupboard.

She slammed the door shut and pushed him up against it, pouncing on him and wantonly kissing him. Though he was momentarily bewildered, he soon reacted and pulled her closer.

 “Adrian, in case this wasn’t clear. I want you to have sex with me, immediately,” Jac ordered, words slurred slightly against his skin as she kissed her way along his jawline.

“At your service,” Fletch answered as he broke away from her and yanked his tie loose, reaching for the band of his trousers and untucking his shirt.

Impatiently, Jac unbuttoned his shirt deftly and shoved it down his arms before returning her attention to his lips. Fletch let his fingers brush the hem of her blouse, waiting for her to raise her arms above her head before tugging it up and off of her.

His eyes went to her bust, encased in a simple black bra and so pristinely petite. Instinctively, his hand reached to brush her nipple through the thin fabric, already feeling it straining against the cotton.

Jac reached for his belt and unbuckled it in one swift movement, pulling open his button and slipping down the fly. He was already hard inside his boxers when she got there, brushing her fingertips against him and feeling him buck into her hand.

“Christ,” he hissed as he dropped his head to suck at her clavicle, hands busied with the task of her own trousers. He slipped his thumbs under the waistband and pulled them down over her thighs, letting them fall to pool around her feet.

Lifting her easily, Fletch stumbled to a stack of bedpan boxes and set her on top of them. His hand trailed up the length of her back and knotted his fingers in her hair, kissing her fiercely as she pulled him, throbbing now, from his trousers.

Time was not on their side, both of them were fully aware of that.

Jac pulled him nearer and slipped on the condom she masterfully unwrapped one handed.

They both gasped as he pushed inside of her for the first time. Hands clung firmly to his back, nails digging into his flesh as she moved with him, grinding her hips as he slammed in and out of her. Biting back her moans so as not to alert the entire ward, she buried her face in his chest and savoured this sensation.

He grunted as he tried to find the perfect angle, proud of himself when he heard the hitch in her breathing that told him he was doing something right. His fingers slipped inside her bra and teased her already hard nipple, rolling it between finger and thumb as she hummed lowly.

Fletch had braced himself against the wall, speeding up his pace as he felt Jac start to contract against him, tightening just slightly as her moans into his chest got louder.

When she came, her nails dug into his shoulder blades so harshly, he was sure she had drawn blood. She mumbled nonsensically as she recovered, still clinging to him as her unsteady breathing quietened.

Jac looked up at him with a clouded gaze and met his lips with hers, grinding her hips against him to encourage him to finish what she had started. He thrust into her roughly only a couple more times before he found his release with a low groan.

He pulled out, panting heavily as he dropped his forehead to rest against hers.

“Bloody hell,” Fletch said with a chuckle. “Not exactly how I expected to spend my Friday morning, I must admit.”

“Surprised but not disappointed?” Jac suggested with a smirk as she reached down between them to pull her trousers back on.

Within two minutes they were both fully dressed again, and nobody would have even guessed that it had happened, or at least they hoped so.

“I’ll wait thirty seconds behind you in case there’s anyone in the hallway,” Fletch offered and Jac was reminded that it wasn’t his first store cupboard fumble. She nodded briskly and opened the door, stepping out and walking down the corridor without a glance backwards.

Desires satiated, she performed a successful surgery on Rhoda Wilson and skated through her day easily. Fletch managed to get through the rest of his meetings without yelling at anybody, and went home to his kids with a smile on his face.

At the dinner table, he received a text:

_Jac: Thanks for today ;)_

With a smug grin, he wished in his head for an equally wonderful tomorrow.


	18. Chapter 18

Things settled into something of a groove after that. They would go out on a Thursday evening for dinner, and they would find at least three times a week to spend some time alone, whether it be in a storage cupboard or at one of their homes in the miraculous event that all the kids were out.

Jac was finally settling back into the groove at work and Fletch had finally emerged from the heap of admin that piled up every January. The kids were all behaving themselves, Mikey included, and life was proving to be as simple as it ever was.

Fletch had been given Tuesday off so he had offered to keep Emma at his rather than her spending the day in the creche and Jac had thanked him gratefully. He had come to pick Emma up on his way back from the school run, with Theo waiting in the car.

“Alright, little Naylor!” Fletch greeted as he opened his arms and took Emma from Jac.

The redhead seemed flustered, an empty mug of coffee in her other hand and wearing only one sock. It was only just past nine, she wasn’t in a rush.

“Sorry, I’m a bit of a mess this morning, didn’t have time to shower because little Madam here decided she wanted to cover herself in breakfast instead, didn’t you?” Jac chastised, bopping Emma on the nose lightly with a smile. “Thank you so much for doing this, Fletch. You’re a lifesaver.”

“I know, I know, I’m a saint among men,” he preached jokingly, pressing a fleeting kiss against her cheek before turning to leave. “Remember your other sock!”

She rolled her eyes at him and went inside to get ready, knowing how much the next ten hours were going to drag without him there to ease the burden. All she could hope was that Emma had a more enjoyable day with Fletch and Theo to keep her company.

Fletch managed to keep the kids occupied all day, even persuading the pair of them to take a nap in the early afternoon. Evie and Mikey walked Ella home from school so that he didn’t have to muck about trying to fit three car seats next to each other.

At 3:45, the three of them bundled through the door and managed to wake both of the toddlers up.  

Luckily, Ella thought Emma was the best thing since sliced bread and managed to keep her busy with her Barbie collection while he attempted to start on dinner. Evie went straight up to her room to study and Mikey wasn’t far behind her on the way up the stairs with his Xbox controller in hand.

Theo sat happily at the dining table, colouring in a Transformers book, while Fletch focused his attentions on the bolognese.

He turned on the radio and danced around the kitchen to the new Calum Scott song; he knew who it was only because Evie had been talking about him for weeks and how this album was going to be the biggest release of the year and she needed to buy it urgently.

“Daddy!” Ella yelled out as she bounded into the kitchen. “Emma fell over and she’s hurt her knee. She’s crying, Daddy!”

Fletch masterfully turned down the heat on the hob so that it wouldn’t boil over and followed Ella through to the living room where Barbies were scattered across the floor messily. Emma was curled in a ball, sobbing as she cradled her knee.

“Oh dear, what on Earth’s happened here?” He asked in a mock-dramatic tone, kneeling beside her and swiping her fringe out of her face with his thumb.

“Hurt my knee,” she sniffled, already beginning to calm down.

“Oh no! Well why don’t I give it a magical medical kiss and it’ll stop hurting? Naughty knee, upsetting Emma!” He tutted, reaching for her bent leg and extending it out to make sure she hadn’t actually hurt herself.

A timid nod from the little girl and he dropped his head to press a big kiss through her jeans, punctuating it with a ‘mwah’. He looked up to see a smile creeping onto her face as she wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her top.

“No more Barbies,” she mumbled as she stood up and shook her head confidently.

“Okay, why don’t you come and colour with Theo until dinner’s ready? Then Ella can come and join in too!” Fletch suggested with a grin. “Later on, you can tell your Mummy about what a brave girl you’ve been, can’t you?”

It took barely ten minutes for the incident to be forgotten and for Emma to become her bubbly self again. By the time that the two eldest came down to eat, she didn’t even think to tell them about the _terrible_ ordeal.

The time flew by until it was bedtime for the youngsters. After _just one more_ episode of Peppa Pig and a few pages of their new bedtime story, Ella and Theo were both out like a light, and Emma was drifting fast.

Fletch carried her downstairs and set her down on the sofa, Jac would be here to pick her up in half an hour anyway. He turned on the news with the volume low, letting the time pass until he heard the doorbell and went to answer it.

“Sorry, I’m late, aren’t I? I got stuck in an emergency op and didn’t think it’d last as long as it did,” Jac rambled as she stepped inside. “Is she ready to go?”

“She’s just asleep on the sofa, you may as well carry her to the car. I need to tell you, though, earlier she tripped over and hurt her knee; I don’t think it’ll bruise and she was upset about it for all of five minutes, but I thought I’d let you know all the same.”

Jac was concerned for all of two seconds, exhaling in relief as Fletch explained fully.

“She didn’t want you to call me, did she? Did she eat all of her dinner? She wasn’t too much trouble, I know she can be a handful-”

“Jac, she was fine, don’t worry. I’ve raised four of my own, your delightful daughter is not going to send me over the edge just yet,” he reassured softly, reaching up to rub her shoulder. “I’m sure she will tell you all about her day when she wakes up tomorrow.”

She nodded and leant to kiss him sweetly.

“I’ll see on Thursday then,” Jac finished, almost sounding like a promise, before turning to carry her sleeping daughter to the car.


	19. Chapter 19

Jac had a nightmare of a day at work. She had been running around like a lapdog and had barely even caught sight of an operating theatre. Nor, in fact, had she caught sight of Fletch.

He was supposed to have lunch with her in his office but he’d text at the last minute and cancelled, and she hadn’t even glimpsed him on the ward all day.

Just as she was leaving for the day, collecting Emma from the creche and heading down to the carpark, her phone rang in her pocket. She pulled it out, unknown number, and answered.

“You promised, you actually made a promise and I didn’t think you’d stoop low enough to break it,” the voice on the other end snapped and she immediately recognised it as Evie’s. “What the hell did you do?”

“Evie, what’s going on? Are you okay?” She questioned tentatively, locking Emma into her car seat before hopping into the driver’s seat.

“Ha! Am I okay? Charming! I’m fine, but Dad’s in his bedroom and he’s told me to keep the others downstairs and to not disturb. He was on the verge of tears, I know you have something to do with this so either you get round here right now and fix this, or I hope to never see you again!”

This explained lunch…partly. Jac told Evie she’d be there in five minutes and headed straight for Fletch’s house. Pulling up outside, she grabbed Emma from the backseat and carried her in, knocking on the door to be met by a very angry Evie.

“I don’t know what’s going on with him, I haven’t even seen him today. If you look after Emma for me then I’ll go upstairs and talk to him, okay?” Evie narrowed her eyes at Jac’s words, she was only just beginning to trust her and this was the kind of thing that could set them back months. No matter how much Evie tried to be a good person and see the best in everybody, Jac was still Jacula in her mind.

Silently, she outstretched her arms for Emma and took the four-year-old into the living room, leaving Jac in the hallway.

Jac had never been in his bedroom, she’d only been upstairs a couple of times to use the bathroom. She kicked off her heels by the bottom step and padded up the carpeted steps, pausing at the top.

There were six doors. Bathroom, she knew that one. Ella and Theo’s both had signs on the doors with their names. She gathered the fourth was Mikey’s from the ‘KEEP OUT’ sign.

Only two left, so she quietly made her way to the first and knocked gently, turning the door handle and poking her head in to find purple walls with The Rolling Stones on one wall and the anatomy of the human body on another. Definitely Evie’s.

She stood outside of the last door for a few seconds before knocking twice.

“Go away, Evie,” she heard in response, slightly sniffly, and went for the door handle, turning it and pushing it open. “I said go- Oh, Jac.”

He was sat at the foot of the double bed, red cheeks and a frown on his face. Jac approached slowly, perching on the bed beside him and placing her hand on his knee.

“Evie rang. What’s going on, Fletch?”

“You know the other week I was moaning about the Trust cutting funding for the regular nursing staff so that more of it can go towards agency staff?” He began, eyes locked on the floor. “They’ve demanded the redundancies of five of my nurses, they’ve even picked out which ones have to go. Now I have to go in to work tomorrow and tell five people that I regard as friends that they don’t have jobs anymore.”

“Oh Fletch, you know this is out of your control. None of them are going to blame you for it, everybody knows just how hard you work to look after your nurses. The board are pricks, somebody should’ve told you that before you took DoN so you didn’t have to deal with this disappointment,” she said softly, “You have every right to be angry, but you don’t get to mope around and blame yourself for something completely out of your control.”

He looked up at her through teary eyes and Jac saw all the pressure he had been putting himself under. She pulled him into a hug and held him tight against her, feeling him fall against her as for first time in weeks, he let himself relax.

“I have to tell Carla she doesn’t have a job, Carla who I’ve worked with almost every day since I moved upstairs from the ED,” he whispers into her shoulder and all she can do is hold him closer.

They stayed like that for a long time, until the sun had set.

“Why don’t you jump in the shower and have five minutes to yourself and I’ll put on some dinner,” Jac suggested, “I’ll even leave Evie with instructions so by the time you get downstairs, it’s on the table.”

“Stay?” He asked quietly as he let go of her and stood up. “For dinner, I mean. If you’ve got no other plans.”

She offered a narrow smile and agreed, kissing his temple tenderly as she headed for the door.

Downstairs, things had settled quite nicely. Jac poked her head in before heading for the kitchen with Evie following her.

“So, where is he?” Evie demanded snappily.

“Having a quick shower while I put something on for dinner, is that alright with you?” Jac asked, already on tiptoes with her head in the cupboard to try and find the tinned sweetcorn.

Evie nodded reservedly, bending down to grab a small pot out of the cupboard and putting it on the hob for Jac. She boiled the kettle, got out the fishfingers and put them on a baking tray, and passed Jac the frozen mixed vegetables.

“Sorry that I assumed the worst.” Jac’s head whipped around to make sure she had heard her correctly, earning her an eye roll from the young teen. “Dad would kill me if he knew how mean I’d been to you,”

“Well, maybe we can keep it between the two of us then. Future surgeons pact or something like that,” Jac suggested with a smile and she couldn’t believe that she was being nice, friendly even, to a teenage girl.

When Fletch came down the stairs with damp hair and a pair of sweatpants on, he was shocked to find the two co-operating so well. His daughter had set the table and Jac was panfrying the salmon from the fridge. It was the image of domesticity that he had never dared to imagine.


	20. Chapter 20

Another week passed and Jac and Emma ended up coming over for dinner twice more. Jac and Fletch agreed that it was time to tell the kids before they heard rumours from someone else, or before they jumped to another conclusion.

They gathered all five of the kids on the sofa in Fletch’s living room and prepared themselves for uproar. The youngsters wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but Mikey was bound to cause a raucous just for the sake of it, and nobody knew exactly what Evie’s reaction would be.

“Kids, we got you all here so that we can tell you something, before you hear it from anybody else. It’s nothing bad, we just want to keep you in the loop,” Fletch explained, “Jac and I are in a relationship now, okay?”

As expected the kids didn’t say a word, just nodded approvingly before turning their attention back to each other. Evie had an eyebrow arched as if to say ‘you thought I didn’t know?’ which was better than Fletch had been expecting. Even Mikey didn’t take it too badly, looking Jac up and down before nodding his acceptance.

The room fell back to a comfortable noise of chatter, with Jac and Fletch looking at each other, a bit bewildered by how smoothly things had gone.

“I should, uh, speak to Mikey. The fact that he _didn’t_ try to cause trouble probably means something’s up. I’ll be back in a minute or two, okay?” Fletch said as he tapped his eldest son on the shoulder and guided him out of the room.

 As soon as Evie was sure her Dad wasn’t going to come back, she crossed the room to stand by Jac.

“I would like to take this opportunity to say I told you so, you were lying to one of us in the car that day,” she stated smugly, the signature Fletcher grin spread across her face.

“Evie, I swear that when we had that conversation, I had no idea where this was headed and we _were_ just friends,” Jac offered sincerely, “and I stand by my promise, I’ll do everything I can.”

The teen nodded gratefully, returning her attention to her younger siblings and approaching them to play with Ella.

Jac couldn’t stop herself from smiling at the scene, Emma fit in so well and her little girl finally got a taste of the life she’d always wished she could give her.

Shamefully, she couldn’t even be happy in that moment, not without the overwhelming concern that she was going to ruin this again, just like she had with Jonny, and just like she had with Joseph. This wouldn’t last for long before she managed to bugger it up entirely and hurt not just Fletch, but herself too.

Happiness was all too fragile, and she was heavy handed when it came to anything but a scalpel.

Fletch poked his head back around the table to announce that dinner was going to be ready in five minutes. He met Jac’s gaze across the room and winked at her, moving to stand beside her and wrapping his arm around her waist casually.

She let her head fall against his shoulder, wading in the feeling of this moment for fear it might end even sooner than she had thought.

At dinner, everything felt like normal. Mikey had, surprisingly, been completely fine about the two of them and had simply ‘decided to be a grown-up about it’. Fletch asked Evie whether she had any thoughts while the others were distracted by their meals.

“I think this gives me eternal homework help rights, because you are absolutely useless and Jac will actually be able to answer my questions,” she responded with a hopeful grin. “If I’m going to end up with a not-so-wicked stepmother, there should at least be some perks.”

“Well I have no complaints. It seems like the education system needs some help raising the next generation of first class surgeons, so I’d best do my bit,” she offered, reaching for Fletch’s hand under the table and feeling him squeeze it reassuringly.

He was the perfect parent. Everybody knew that. Jac trusted him with Emma’s life.

The other way around, however? She wasn’t the model Mum that she imagined him wanting as a role model for his teenager. They were not equals, not in his home.

They ate just as a normal family would; the kids even helped with the washing up which was nothing short of a miracle. This was everything that Jac had ever dreamed of, though she hastened to admit it even within her own mind. All that she wanted was to give her children the childhood that she never got to have.

Both of the older kids were asked if they were comfortable with Jac and Emma spending the night here tonight, since it was getting quite late. Neither of them had a problem so Emma and Ella top-and-tailed while Jac awkwardly made her way to Fletch’s room and slipped inside.

“You need a shirt to sleep in?” Fletch asked casually as he pulled his shirt off and turned to face her.

All Jac could do was give a shy nod. Fletch withdrew a t-shirt from one of his drawers and passed it to her, smiling.

She felt so childish. It wasn’t like she’d never shared a bed with someone before, she’d shared a bed with Fletch before! But they’d never _slept_ together and that felt like something else entirely from sleeping together.

Turning away from him, she pulled her blouse over her head, unlatched her bra, and put the looser, softer top on. Kicking off her slacks, she tugged the shirt down to cover her bum and quickly folded her clothes into a neat pile.

Jac placed them down on the bedside cabinet and sat on the edge of the bed. Fletch flipped down the edge of the duvet and climbed underneath it, reaching for the tv remote and turning on BBC One.

“Are you okay?” Fletch questioned with a hint of concern in his voice, reaching to put his hand on her arm.

She turned, slipping under the duvet and shuffling close to him, letting his arm wrap around her shoulders.

“Yeah, it’s just weird, isn’t it. This morning, we were the only people who knew and it was still sort of a secret, and now I’m staying in your bed and your kids know I’m here,” she admitted, settling her hand on his bare chest and turning her attention to the television.

She fell asleep with her head on his chest, never having felt safer than she did with his arm wrapped around her.


	21. Chapter 21

Things were going so well. Jac was happier than she had ever been and everything was coming up rosy in her garden. Fletch was just glad to see that something was finally going right for her, she’d been through so much and even though he’d tried to be there for her, seeing her genuinely at ease was so much more than that.

They saw each other more than even normal couples did. The kids all got on so well and Evie was such a massive help.

More than anything, Fletch really did bring out the best in Jac. She was always at her kindest, at her least short-tempered, at her happiest, when she was with him. It was something about being around someone who liked all of those attributes that made her want to show them a little more often.

Everybody had noticed the difference. It wasn’t public knowledge at the hospital yet but Frieda had suspected since day one, and Jac had given in and told Sacha eventually after a solid hour of pestering.

“Hey stranger,” Fletch greeted as he let himself into her office. “Fancy lunch? I brought pastries.”

“I’ve got a bunch of paperwork to get through before I head into theatre at two. I’m sorry, I’ll see you later though,” Jac replied, barely looking up from her desk as she answered him.

He nodded acceptingly and headed to the staff room to pop the pastries in the fridge so they would be fresh for her to take home tonight.

It seemed like she was even busier than usual the past few days, he felt daft for thinking anything of it but nevertheless, he couldn’t stop his mind from wandering. He sat in his office for the entire afternoon, replying to e-mails and trying to figure out if he might have done anything wrong.

Jac poked her head in on him after she’d scrubbed out, a pleasant surprise.

“Sorry, I was so busy today. Serena’s asked me to attend a conference in Edinburgh and apparently I’m not allowed to send Petrenko in my place so you’re going to be on your own for a couple of days. Emma’s staying at Jonny and Penny’s,” Jac explained. “I have to be there first thing in the morning so I’m going home to pack and then leaving straight away.”

Wheeling his chair backwards, he stepped out from behind his chair and moved closer to her, taking her hand in his.

“It’s a bit sudden, but at least it isn’t for too long. I guess I’ll see you when you get back then, make sure to text me when you get there so I know you aren’t stranded in the middle of nowhere. The pastries are in the staff room fridge, if you wanted them for the journey,” he offered, smiling tenderly at her.

She pulled her hand from his and tucked it into her jacket pocket, kissed him on the cheek and opened the door.

“See you on Wednesday, Fletcher,” she responded as she walked away down the corridor.

It had hurt her to be so nonchalant in her farewell, but she was trying to tell her mind not to get attached. Every five minutes, she reminded herself that this wasn’t forever. When she was with him, she upped it to every five seconds.

She didn’t stop for the pastries, they would only make her think of him, and headed straight for the lift instead. Maybe a couple of days away from all of this would remind her that there was life before Adrian Fletcher and there would be life afterwards too.

The entire drive home and the entire time she spent packing, all she could think about was how abrupt she had been with him. Her aim was to stop either of them from getting hurt but it seemed like she was doing the exact opposite and she hated herself for doing that.

She tapped out a quick text to him after getting into the back of her taxi:

_Jac: Sorry if that seemed like I was being a bitch, was just in a hurry x_

Within a minute, he had replied:

_Fletch: No worries, have a good journey x_

It was getting harder to distance herself from him. Every time she did, it felt a little bit more like a bad decision. Emma was getting just as attached as she was, if not moreso, and that was only going to make things more difficult.

The train journey was surprisingly quiet and she spent the majority of it with her head buried in a book Sacha had recommended to her. While his taste in women, movies, and surgical specialties were all sub-par, he certainly did know where to find a good book.

A guy sat across from her was wearing a shirt that she knew Fletch would like, she told herself not to think about but ended up asking the man where it was from and logged it in her memory.

By the time she arrived in Edinburgh, it was 11:30pm and all she wanted to do was fall into bed. Serena had splashed out and gotten her a king-size room to compensate for the short notice, something she was endlessly grateful for.

As she plugged her phone into charge, she considered texting Fletch to tell him she had arrived and mindfully decided against it, cruel as she felt. Drifting to sleep, she forced her mind not to think about him though she was failing miserably and all she wanted was to call him and tell him how much of an awful person she was for doing this to him, to _them_.

The Naylor stubbornness kicked in and she rolled away from her phone, not ready to give in to temptation quite yet.

Fletch eventually gave in and went to sleep at 1o’clock, having presumed that Jac had forgotten to text and believing that she would have text if there _was_ a problem. He couldn’t help but worry, it was in his nature, but still he turned in for the night and hoped that he would wake to a text from her.

Of course, he wouldn’t.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY you guys know i want flac endgame and i assure you that this is not the end of this fic, i just feel like its more authentic if things are rocky between them. giving jac a happily ever after isn't exactly realistic.

On Wednesday evening, Fletch text her the details for dinner tomorrow night. He knew something was off with her, and he was planning to ask her about it over Indian delicacies.

She didn’t reply immediately but he presumed she was busy with Emma, having been away from her unplanned. It was strange to him, he knew exactly what he was doing, rationalising her every action so that he didn’t have to confront it just yet, but still it made him feel a little better.

They didn’t see each other at work the next day, Jac spent her entire shift doing back-to-back surgeries. He left work at five with Theo and Emma in the back, dropping them off at home with Evie before showering and getting changed into some nicer clothes.

At 6:15, he left for the restaurant and ended up finding a parking space right outside. Inside he was guided to the table where he sat down and waited for Jac to arrive. He was 10 minutes early and she wasn’t exactly the greatest at time management, so he gave her a bit of leeway.

When it got to 7o’clock, he called her, only to have it picked up by a voice he recognised as one of the theatre nurses.

“She says she’ll call you back once she’s out of theatre, Fletch,” Mandy said, entirely unawares of what she was relaying to him.

 _No more excuses,_ he told himself as he rose and made for the door. He got into his car and drove straight to the hospital, there was no point pretending that there wasn’t something going on, not now.

He didn’t make a big deal, didn’t storm into theatre and demand an explanation, but instead went and waited in her office for her to return.

At around a quarter to eight, she did, and she looked extremely surprised to see him.

“Fletch, what are you doing here?” She questioned, pushing her office door shut. “I’m sorry about dinner, I didn’t even realise what day it is, and I’ve been in and out theatre since 8o’clock this morning.”

“Do you hear yourself? Seriously, you think I’m going to believe that. If for some reason, you don’t want this anymore or I’ve done something wrong, can you at least be honest and talk to me? I know the deal – you are a very difficult woman to deal with and you come with more baggage than a Boeing 747 and you will break my heart without even meaning to, and all the rest of the nonsense that you tell people to try and scare them away. What is going on with you?”

Jac looked at him with wide, watery eyes and she hates herself for crumbling so easily under his gaze.

“I am a very difficult woman to deal with and I come with more baggage than a Boeing 747 and I will break your heart without even meaning to. I will scare you away even if I haven’t managed it yet,” Jac answers in a somber tone, shoulders slumped. “Emma loves you and she loves the kids, I can’t do this to her…I can’t do this to me…or you, or the kids. I don’t have it in me to watch you walk away from me once you realise how unlovable I am, so I am doing the walking and I’m sorry if that burns you but I can promise that it’s burning me too.”

Fletch exhaled deeply, trying to keep a level head as he stood up.

“You stupid woman, when will you accept that not everybody is going to leave you? You build these walls up so that you don’t get hurt, and you cover them in barbed wire so nobody wants to come near you but I AM ALREADY INSIDE, JAC. There is no way for me to get away from you because I am inside of the walls and I know you and I see you and I never want to be reminded of what life was like before I did!”

“Fletch-”

“No, you listen to me right now because I am tired of you making decisions for the both of us. You spend your entire life saving people and telling them to make the most of their lives and follow their dreams and embrace every second, but you are so scared of things going wrong. Just because this might fall apart doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a chance on it. I bloody love you and I’m not letting you run away from me just because you’re frightened; it is my job to be here when you are frightened and to reassure you and to help you through it!”

“Fletch-”

He closed the gap between the two of them in two long strides and pulled her into a passion-filled kiss that filled Jac with the adrenaline of every risk she’d ever taken and every time she’d ever dared to dream.

Jac forced herself away from him and shook her head.

“Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true. I have loved only a handful of people in my life, and all of them except for Emma, in one way or another, broke my heart. I love you too, Adrian, and that’s why I’m not sure I can do this,” she stated boldly. “You can’t change my mind. I truly am sorry.”

Fletch looks at her and he knows in that moment that he cannot fix this, that she needs space or she needs someone else to speak to her but the last thing she needs is him right now.

“Okay, I’ll…drop Emma at creche in the morning then,” he finished as he headed for the door quietly and left.

In the darkness of her office, Jac lets herself cry and she cannot believe she has allowed herself to ruin this. She grieves for a love she had barely acknowledged and she wishes that she were someone else, someone deserving of love, someone capable of it, just anybody other than herself right now.  


	23. Chapter 23

Days passed, and they fell back into the pattern of avoiding one another. Sacha tried to reason with her when he heard what had happened but all she told him was that Fletch deserved better.

She settled into a routine, even saw Jonny a couple of times in the hopes that he might serve as a distraction. Emma was all that was keeping her going anymore, and Jac knew that her mood hadn’t gone unnoticed by the toddler.

“Jac, can I speak to you?” Jonny asked as he dropped Emma off on Sunday afternoon, following her inside and waiting until Emma had hurried off to her bedroom to play before he continued. “Emma mentioned something this weekend, about you being sad because of Fletch. Is everything okay?”

“I don’t really think my personal life concerns you, Jonny,” she snapped.

“It is when our daughter’s coming to me and telling me that she doesn’t like hearing Mummy cry! Talk to me, Jac,” Jonny pleaded, genuinely concerned for the mother of his child.

“Me and Fletch were together for a while but surprise, surprise, I blew things up. I’ll be fine, it’s just an adjustment, I was properly happy for the first time in a while and now I’m not,” she stated incuriously. “Nothing to worry yourself about, Maconie.”

“Jac, what did you do?” He asked, meeting her gaze and seeing the genuine pain that rested there.

She turned and walked through to the kitchen, boiling the kettle to make coffee. Jonny took the seat which was once his and looked at her expectantly.

“I broke things off before I could hurt him. He has four kids to worry about, and I didn’t want to get anymore attached only to mess things up the same way I always tend to,” she admitted sadly. “Ironic really, give me a scalpel and I can make a heart good-as-new, but ask me to love it and it’s going to be returned to you in pieces.”

She poured hot water into a pair of mugs and stirred, waiting for them to brew a little, continuing to look away from Jonny.

“You always do this. You get happy and then you blow it up because you think that if you do it, it won’t do as much damage as if you wait for the world to do its part. You did it with Joseph, you did it with me, you even tried to do it with Emma. The only person who ever breaks your heart is you, Jac,” Jonny said, and Jac swiftly turned around with both mugs, slamming them down on the island and sliding one towards him.

She sips at the coffee and it burns the roof of her mouth, but she does not complain.

“Who I choose to love isn’t really any of your concern, Jonny, so I don’t know why we’re having this conversation. Just because you’re happy now doesn’t mean you get to dole out advice on everything I’m doing wrong. I made the right decision for myself, so maybe you should just stay out of it,” she bit out, swiping away his coffee and pouring it down the sink.

 It was Wednesday when she heard a knock at her door again, and the past three days had gone like clockwork, she barely remembered them.

“You broke a promise,” and as soon as she opened the door, she tried to shut it again only to have it pushed in her face as Evie stormed into the house. “Even when I thought the worst of you, I still believed you had some integrity. How dare you do this to him, after everything he’s been through?”

“Evie, you’re supposed to be at school. What are you doing here?”

“It’s lunch, I forged a note, I’m not a child and I am perfectly capable of making my way across Holby when I need to,” she snapped, glaring at Jac with disgust. “Dad says you were scared but I think he’s just trying to cover for you. You’re one of the smartest, bravest people I’ve ever met and I don’t believe you’re thick enough to give up someone as great as my Dad just because you’re frightened he might dump you!”

Emma slid down the stairs on her bum to see what all the noise was about, babbling Evie’s name as she rushed towards her and jumped into the girl’s arms.

“Darling, Evie and I are just having a chat. Why don’t you go and watch some Peppa?” Jac suggested, corralling her into the living room where she heard the television turn on almost immediately. “Why don’t we go through to the kitchen?”

Shyly, Evie followed her and settled, leaning against the wall beside the door.

“You’re already sad. You may as well put it off until later. I don’t understand the logic behind what you’ve done, unless you really don’t care about him…which is a possibility that I don’t want to consider.”

“Please, Evie. I know you can’t understand this but I need you to try. Everybody I have ever cared about has either moved as far away from me as they could or they have died, and I know your Dad would never desert me,” Jac practically whispered and she couldn’t believe that she had just said that to Fletch’s child. “I—you shouldn’t be here. You should be at school. You can’t fix this, Evie.”

“No, I can’t, but you can, and you have to. You’re hurting more people than just yourself right now, Jac.”

Evie left without another word, leaving the redhead a little stunned.

Hearing Evie say that made her believe it. She’d been saying it to herself for weeks but it hadn’t really clicked until it came out of Evie’s mouth in that very moment. She was condemning herself to this.

Fletch wasn’t going to ruin things. The world wasn’t going to ruin things. _She_ was going to ruin things, because she always had and because she believed she would. It was time to break the cycle.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a short one kids i'm sorry but y'all gotta cut me some slack i've written u 25k in two days xxx

She doesn’t bluster in with all guns blazing right away. She gives herself time to think, about what she ought to say, and how to move forward from this. She lets herself consider what would be best for her.

It wasn’t until over halfway through the shift that she approached Fletch’s office and knocked on the door. He was surprised to see her, eyebrow arched as she stepped inside and closed them off in some semblance of privacy.

“How can I help you, Ms Naylor?” He asked in a professional, detached tone.

“You were right, and I was selfish and stupid and reckless. I’ve booked an appointment with a therapist. I know you aren’t going to take me back, or at least not right away. You can’t trust me after this, I don’t even trust me right now. I just wanted to tell you that I’m trying, because I don’t want to watch myself ruin us,” she declared boldly and waited to hear his response.

Fletch blinked profusely at her, almost as though he thought she might disappear.

“I’m not going to sit around and watch you struggle through this alone just so I can step in at the last minute and be there for the easy bit. If you want this, then I’m here, from today until the day you don’t want it anymore,” he offered and stood, approaching her with a hopeful smile. “I will listen to you try and leave me a dozen times a day if I have to, I am not going anywhere.”

Perhaps it was the fact that it has been so long since she had kissed him, or perhaps it was the fact that she lets herself believe this is forever for a second, but when she closed the gap between the two of them and met his lips, she did not care that the blinds were open and the entire ward could be watching.

She tugged him closer to her and breathed him in, feeling his hands at her waist and wondering how she ever gave him up.

They broke apart for air, smiling wildly at one another. Fletch did not loosen his grip on her and she wondered if for the first time, he was just as scared as her.

“You really booked therapy?” Fletch asked as he pulled her with him so that he could lean against the desk.

“If it isn’t you, it’ll just be the next person that I shut out of my life. This is about me, and I want you to be a part of that, but I can’t let you be my only reason behind it,” Jac answered and Fletch had never been so proud of her.

 It was Frieda who worked up the nerve, almost twenty-five minutes later, to knock on Fletch’s door and request Ms. Naylor’s help with a patient. Jac begrudgingly left, going to fix whatever mess Frieda had managed to make.

The rest of the day was relatively quiet; Jac performed an elective surgery and Fletch drew up rotas for the next month. At the end of the day, Fletch popped into Jac’s office to ask her if she wanted to come over for dinner.

“Not tonight…maybe we should take things a little slower this time,” she suggested tentatively, and his enthusiastic grin was not what she had expected in response.

 Walking across the room, he leant down to kiss her softly and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Jac smiled at him, eyes glinting in the poorly-lit room, and gave him a peck.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fletch said with a smile as he stepped back and made towards the office door.

 When he returned home that afternoon with a beaming grin on his face, Evie had to try and hide her smugness. He does not tell anyone why he is in such a good mood and nobody dares to ask, but in her own head, Evie knows that she somehow got through to Jac.

Under the dinner table, she unlocked her phone and tapped out a message to Jac:

_Evie: Happy you saw sense._

_Jac: Pleased you presume your Dad’s good mood is courtesy of me._

“Evie, no phones at the dinner table, I’ve told you before,” her Dad reminded her and she tucked it into her pocket.

She had done her bit and now it was up to the adults to work things out for themselves. She wanted her Dad happy, and if that meant Jac was in the picture then so be it. Ella and Theo might’ve preferred someone a little more traditional, given the option, but she had already known a mother and she did not need another one.

Jac was a person that she trusted and respected deeply but she was not her mother, nor would she ever be. It was an arrangement that she was sure suited all those involved.


	25. Chapter 25

Fletch had been fearful that things would fall apart just as quickly as they had come together. He stayed in good faith, trusting that Jac wanted this to work as much as he did. The fact that she actually trying gave him faith that she wanted him and that she wanted this, and every time she let him in a little more, he knew it was a step forward.

It was remarkable how quickly things settled down again. Thursday became date night again and Jac and Emma went over for dinner every Monday. They saw each other regularly throughout the week but always made sure that there was at least one day where they didn’t see each other…to keep things from getting overwhelming.

On Friday afternoons, Jac went to therapy after she finished work.

“So Jac, how are things going this week?” Sarah asked with a smile, pen ready to note down anything important.

“Pretty normal; I’ve been working a lot, I’ve seen Fletch a little, things are starting to get back to the old routine,” she replied concisely. Even if she was here, and even if she wanted it, Jac wasn’t very good at therapy yet.

“How do you feel about that? The old routine resulted in you breaking up with Fletch and burying yourself in work, don’t you think that it could just do the same thing again?”

Jac glared at her disdainfully, wasn’t the point of therapists to make you less scared of doing the wrong thing? She was getting extremely annoyed with this woman who seemed to be doing everything wrong by _her_ books, but she stuck around because she had promised herself she would try this time.

“It wasn’t the routine. It wasn’t Fletch. It wasn’t work. It was me, and that’s the part of the equation that I’m trying to change here,” she answered confidently, and Sarah offered a little smile at that.

They spoke for the next 55 minutes about her childhood and her past relationships and where she thought it’d all gone wrong. There was a catharsis in talking about it, in admitting her anger at her mother and the way she had treated everybody she loved from there forward.

Jac left with an assignment of sorts. Do something small each day to show somebody that she loved them, and not to tell them why. Well this was going to be difficult to keep under wraps if she was using Fletch has her subject.

On the first day, she brought him coffee and told him she was allowed to do something nice for him if she wanted.

On the second day, she bought him the shirt that she had asked the guy on the train to Edinburgh about and left it on a hanger in his office with a  note saying she thought it would suit him.

On the third day, she brought him a bacon sarnie for lunch and told him she didn’t know if he’d had time to get anything himself.

On the fourth day, she finished early and picked Theo up from the creche with Emma, taking them both back to hers and dropping him a text to say that she would drop him off at 6o’clock.

On the fifth day, she told him that she liked his tie, jauntily describing it as ‘not hideous’ and saw the way his face lit up.

On the sixth day, she refused surgery in the knowledge that it would leave her running late for dinner.

And on day seven, she took him to the Darwin store cupboard and showed him just how grateful she was to have him.

The last thing was to do was to ask him if she’d been different this week, and so she did.

“I wouldn’t say so. Why, have you had your haircut and I haven’t noticed? Or, is it your perfume?” he rattled on awkwardly as she laughed at how flustered he was getting. “What is it?”

“My therapist gave me an assignment to do one nice thing for you every day and see if you picked up on it,”Jac explained. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean that you didn’t, maybe I’m not good enough at doing nice things.”

“No, it means that you do nice things for me every day without even realising it, and that you are so much better at caring about people than you think you are. Stop thinking that you don’t show me how much I mean to you because you do,” Fletch said, rubbing her arm from wrist to elbow, over and over again in a soothing pattern.

She smiled at him weakly, a little embarrassed but pleased all the same. Her appointment was in five minutes, so she excused herself and headed downstairs.

 It was incredible the way that therapy structured her life. Every week, she would discuss how her assignment meant and what she learned, and then they would talk about her week, and then they would talk about the roots of her problems, and then she would be set another assignment.

Weeks passed, and she started to feel like things might actually be changing. When she was feeling insecure, she would go to Fletch instead of hiding from him, and when she needed time to herself, she would tell him first instead of leaving him to worry.

She had started to believe that things weren’t going to fall apart solely because of her. Her mindset was actually changing, and she had never been more frightened; pessimism and emotional absence had served as a safety blanket for her almost her entire life and she wasn’t quite ready to give them up.

But she had to, and she knew that deep down. Years of pretending that she didn’t care had to be put into the past if she actually wanted things to change. _No more excuses,_ she told herself, it was time to fix this.


	26. Chapter 26

It was Monday night and the kids were all in bed. Fletch had invested in a blow-up mattress for Emma since the occurrence was becoming increasingly frequent. Jac was curled into Fletch’s side as they sat on the couch, watching late night television with no real interest.

“I blame myself for Jasmine’s death,” Jac blurted out, stiffening slightly against Fletch as she realised she had said it out loud. “Sarah made me realise it in therapy on Friday and I wasn’t going to tell you because I thought she was just psychoanalysing but she was right. I do blame myself.”

Fletch reached for the remote and turned down the volume but said nothing; he was listening.

“If I’d been a better friend to Fran and I’d tried harder to be there for her, if I hadn’t argued with Jasmine that day just because she was completely right about me then Fran wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the situation. Fran tried to break me and Jasmine apart but she didn’t need to put in the effort, I did that all by myself.”

Her voice was calm. She had spent enough time analysing every moment of that day and accepting what she part she had taken in it. Rationally, she knew it was not her fault and that she couldn’t have prevented it in all honesty, but accepting everything that her fear of attachment had done was progress.

Jac didn’t wait for him to speak, she knew he wouldn’t. The only words he had were those of reassurance, those that would tell her she wasn’t to blame and that she couldn’t have done anymore to help. Instead he held her snugly and reminded her that he was right there if she needed him.

He placed a kiss into her hair and wondered why she had told him, not that he wasn’t pleased. Maybe this meant she was opening up, maybe the walls were beginning to lower just a little.

For at least another ten minutes, they sat in a comfortable silence and absently watched whatever was on the television

“This show is pointless, shall we head up to bed?” Fletch suggested quietly. He received no response so carefully turned his head so he could see Jac’s face, eyes shut, breathing steady, and absolutely knackered.

Carefully, he switched off the television and shifted out from underneath her, holding her up with his hand as he stood. Jac’s legs were curled up in a way that made it easy for him to slip his arm under the crook of her knees and lift her, with his other hand supporting her back.

She was light in his arms, an easy weight to carry through from the living room and out to the staircase. Slowly, he managed to make his way to the top of the stairs where he was met by a confused Mikey.

“Is Jac okay, Dad?” he asked, hand resting of his door handle.

“Just tired, Mikey. Go back to bed,” Fletch whispered back, stretching with his pointer finger to turn of the landing light and nudging his way into the master bedroom.

Masterfully, after years of practice carrying his children to bed single-handedly, he drew back the duvet on her side and set her down lightly. Pulling off his shirt and trousers, he rounded the bed and climbed in.

He drifted off quickly, more tired than he had thought he was. The two naturally curled into one another and slept soundly.

At 4:38, according to the alarm clock beside her, Jac woke.

In her mind, she found no recollection of how she made it to bed last night or why she was still fully dressed but sure enough, here she was. Fletch’s warm palm was underneath the hem of her tee, resting loosely against her belly.

How she had gotten so lucky, she did not know. She rolled over so that she could look at him, noticing the way his nose was crinkled up and he was smiling just slightly in his sleep.

“I love you,” she whispered so shallowly that she barely heard it herself. It felt like saying Macbeth in a theatre, or saying Bloody Mary in front of a mirror, it was tempting fate and yet she couldn’t help herself.

He stirred in his sleep and she tensed up, waiting for him to still again before she allows herself to breathe.

Buried somewhere deep in her head, in a compartment that only ever enters her conscious mind in the small hours, is the fear that this will all crumble. She tried to ignore it, shuffling so she could nestle her face in the crook of Fletch’s neck, wrapping herself in his presence to stop her mind from wandering.

Fletch pulled her closer in his sleep, mumbling something before settling again. She shut her eyes and let herself drift, clearing her mind as she rested in his embrace.

Until 6:30, she snoozed lightly, and then dragged herself up out of bed so she could grab the first shower before the kids were all fighting for it in the school rush.

She was back in the bedroom, wearing his dressing gown, when he woke. He opened his eyes to the bright sunlight of the morning streaming in and saw Jac stood at the foot of the bed, fresh faced with wet hair and he had never seen beauty like it.

“Good morning you,” he grumbled out in his husky morning voice. “How long have you been awake?”

“Only about half an hour, thought I’d get in before the kids were fighting for it,” she answered, smiling at how handsome he looked _despite_ the squinting eyes and the bedhead. “You might wanna get on that, I definitely heard movement in Evie’s room.”

He groaned as he dragged himself out of bed, kissing Jac on the forehead as he passed her and eagerly headed for the bathroom. She rolled her eyes at him and returned her attention to the day ahead, glad that she wasn’t working today.

Jac smiled to herself, in the best mood she had been in for a long while.


	27. Chapter 27

Jonny called unexpectedly on a Thursday evening, just as their meals arrive. Fletch told her to take it, just in case it was something important.

“Hey Jonny, what is it?” she greeted abruptly, willing him to talk quickly.

“Are you busy? I don’t want to interrupt your evening,” he replied, clearing his throat.

“I’m at dinner with Fletch. Just get to the point so I can eat, please.”

“Oh, maybe I should just talk to you next time I see you. You’re obviously in the middle of something.”

“Jonny, just tell me what it is so that we can both get on with our lives!” she exclaimed, already losing her patience with him.

“Well basically, I’m planning to drive up to my parents’ this week, leave tomorrow afternoon and come back on Wednesday. I was wondering if you’d mind Emma coming with me, they haven’t seen her in months and I’m sure she’d enjoy seeing her cousins while we’re there. Of course, if you had plans or anything then I could try and reschedule but-”

“That’s fine, Jonny. Just text me and tell me what to pack for her and you can collect her from the creche as usual,” she assured on auto-pilot, eager to get off the phone.

“Oh, well…okay then, I’ll text you,” he finished uncertainly, hanging up the call.

She rolled her eyes and put the phone face down on the table, returning her attention to her food and digging in. Fletch was looking at her expectantly but right now she didn’t want to talk about Jonny, he was the last person on the planet that she wanted to think about when she was actually in a good mood.

 Not until they were leaving the restaurant did she tell him the details of their phone conversation.

“You said yes?” He questioned, rather surprised that she had agreed when she was normally so particular about Emma’s schedule.

“I did,” Jac confirmed, and she wasn’t sure in her brain why she had done it. Maybe it was because she had a busy week ahead of her and she would’ve barely seen Emma in the three additional days anyway, or maybe it was because she’d been challenging herself to trust the people she loved not to desert her.

In the dim light of the evening streets, she linked her arm through Fletch’s and told herself that it wasn’t forever, it wasn’t even for a full week. At the end of it, Emma would return home to her as if she never left and things would be perfectly fine.

“I should probably stay at home tonight, I’m gonna have to pack a bag for her and there’s just a few bits I’ll have to sort out before tomorrow,” she explained, stopping as they got to her car and getting into the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, of course,” Fletch responded as she dropped into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut.

The journey to Fletch’s was quick and quiet, Jac was trying to conceal the fact that she was anxious about her decision and simply remained silent the entire way there. She was in and out of the house in only a couple of minutes, kissing Fletch goodnight at his front door and heading back to the car.

She threw appropriate clothes into a bag for Emma haphazardly, climbing into bed and falling asleep almost immediately. When she woke the next morning, she told Emma at breakfast that she was going to see Nanny and Grandpa.

“Are you coming, Mummy?” Emma asked as she took a bite of her toast.

“No, baby. You’re going with Daddy and Lydia,” Jac explained, taking a swig of coffee and hoping that she can get through the day without any hiccoughs.

Dropping Emma off at the creche on Friday morning, she hugged her daughter a little longer than usual before letting her run off to play with her friends.

It felt infantile to be so anxious about Emma going away for a few nights with her father, and yet here she was, worrying that something would happen and she might never seen her little girl again. All of the psychoanalysis she’d been through had made her hyperaware of what she was thinking and it was making things harder in the short term.

She got through the morning easily, pretended it was a normal day and wondered if she’d be able to keep it up, until Sunday at least.

“Surgery in fifteen minutes, Naylor,” Frieda reminded her sharply. “Don’t be late.”

She forced herself through the rest of the day, and passed by Fletch’s office on her way to therapy.

“Hey, you okay?” Fletch greeted with a smile as she stepped inside. “Emma get off okay?”

“I guess so, Jonny hasn’t text to say anything went wrong,” she answered, “I really don’t feel like therapy today. My dream evening would be to curl up in bed and be spoon fed ice-cream until the brain freeze makes me forget that my daughter is in another country without me.”

“Okay, first of all, Scotland barely counts as another country anyway. Go to therapy and talk this through because you know it’s exactly why you need to go, and then you can come over and I will feed you ice cream,” he bartered carefully, “I’ll even stop on my way and get some mint choc chip.”

Glaring at him moodily, Jac nodded briskly before leaving the office and heading for the lift.

She raked herself through an hour of _talking_ before finally making her escape and heading her car, driving to Fletch’s with thoughts of mint ice cream and an early night on her mind.

Sure enough, Fletch was on hand with a spoon and a tub as soon as Jac knocked on the door and Mikey let her in. He was considerate, and he let her curl up in bed with it and watch nature documentaries until she was tired, then he held her as she slept, knowing that tomorrow, things would be a little easier.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry i didn't update yesterday, basically i got no sleep on sunday night because i'm an idiot so i wasn't really functioning too well yesterday. updates will be back up to speed until friday at least i think, not sure how long this entire thing is going to be at this point but i'm rolling with it for now !!
> 
> ALSO can we talk about how i publish a chapter about them taking the kids to the zoo on thursday and then spoilers get released about them taking the kids to the zoo today,,, p sure i'm a psychic

When Emma returned, she had been snotty-nosed and coughing and Jac had made sure to lecture Jonny on the dangers to young children that the common cold could have.

She kept her well dosed with Calpol and made sure she always has a pack of tissues with her wherever she goes. Jac barely even clocked it the first time she sneezes, but when it was followed by another, she realised what this means.

Jonny got an earful about the threat of contamination in the hospital, and she felt slightly guilty for picking on him so much but frankly, he deserved it.

By Saturday morning, she was a disease-ridden cesspool of germs. Her approach can be heard simply by the wheezing of her chest, and everybody at work was subdued around her, scared of the effect that illness had upon her temper.

“You want some tea?” Fletch offered, waving a Pulses cup in front of her as she lifted her head from the desk to pay attention to him. Gratefully, she accepted it and took a sip which warmed her entire body.

He rubbed her back soothingly, knowing that she would be working herself to the bone whether she was sick or not. Somewhere behind all of the bravado was a woman who wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a week, and he was looking after _her_ whether Jac liked it or not.

Telling herself that the paperwork she had stacked on her desk could wait a little while, she humoured him and allowed herself to relax for a short while.

“Haven’t you got things to do?” she asked sarcastically, entertained by the way he watched her every move as she might collapse. “I’m not _actually_ a patient, in case you’d forgotten.”

He scoffed at her, rolling his eyes as he pulled out his phone, busying himself with something that wasn’t Jac Naylor. It was only about ninety seconds until he glanced up the first time to check on her, though she didn’t say a word, too enamoured with how caring he was.

Frieda was the only other member of staff that she had seen all day, poking her head in occasionally for second opinions on things or simply to make sure that everything was in order. Whether she liked it or not, Frieda had to admit that she was attached to Jac like a limpet now.

“Frieda, go deal with your patients and leave me to suffer in peace. I’m sure Mr Fletcher isn’t going to sit there and watch me die,” Jac reasoned, not bothering to try and raise her voice in the knowledge that she couldn’t anyway.

Though a little begrudged, the Slav left without another word and allowed Jac to relax a little. It was going to be a long day, they were only a few hours into the shift and she was already getting antsy. What if someone coded on the ward? Jac was the consultant on call and she couldn’t reasonably go within ten feet of any pre-operative patient.

Despite her attempts to hide it from Fletch, she was in a terrible mood and frankly, the last thing she wanted to do when she felt like this was spend her day with him. For possibly for the first time in her life, it is not because he is annoying but rather because he is so wonderful that she wants to be at her best in his presence.

“Why don’t you take a nap? That paperwork can wait and I know that because I gave most of it to you. There’s no harm in taking a break,” Fletch offered gently, looking toward her and seeing how drained she was.

It was difficult for Jac to accept his help, everything she did was second-guessed by the idea that she looked weak. She had to force herself to agree, crossing to the couch where she laid out with her head in Fletch’s lap.

Before long she had fallen asleep and was snoring lightly. Fletch ran his fingers through her hair and smiled down at her. He stayed there, thinking about nothing significant, until she woke and he had no idea how long it had been.

“Sorry, you should’ve moved me, you probably wanted to get some work done while I was accounted for,” she mumbled, stretching voraciously before sitting up and curling into his side instinctively. “I’m sure you have far more important things to do than play nurse for me.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at that, she never lost that hint of cattiness. She had still been the same snarky Naylor, from the moment she woke up after being shot. Even when she was entirely relaxed, even when she was in the best mood, she could still pull that cattiness out of nowhere when she wanted to.

It felt bizarre that they were like this; curled up on her office couch making bad jokes as she recovered from the flu. Sometimes Jac forgot that it had only been a couple of months since all of this had first started, since everything between them had kicked off and she had actually given herself the freedom to love somebody – even if it had taken a therapist, a very determined man, and a lot of risk-taking to get her there.

For the rest of the shift, they sat on the sofa and laughed and ate prawn crackers until the clock hit five and Jac could go home. She wouldn’t, of course, because sick or not, Evie would be personally offended if she didn’t come over to watch a movie with them all tonight.

Braced with a big pack of tissues and more Lemsip than she’d consumed in her entire life, she would head to Fletch’s and she would shove the first she thing she found into the oven and she would make Evie take care of her until Fletch got back. Fletch kissed her on the forehead before heading to his office, ready to rake himself through one last hour of work.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello have some evie content because we all know that fav aspiring surgeon has got to be here

On Monday evening, the new and improved Jac turned up with a still sniffling Emma.

The youngster toddled off to find Theo and Ella, while Jac strolled through to the kitchen and found Fletch at the hob. She greeted him, putting a bottle of white wine down on the table before beginning to set out the knifes and forks.

“How was work? Sorry I bailed on lunch, Serena had me doing to the monthly budget and said it _had to be done_ by the end of the day,” he complained as he stirred a pot of what Jac presumed to be pasta sauce.

“Good, theatre this morning went smoothly and Frieda’s doing well, I think she could go for consultant in the autumn, we could do with another one as long as Serena can find space for it in the budget. I may like having the place under my reign but coping with Mo gone has been a real strain on everybody,” she replied. “Still got plenty of time to get her in the best condition for the job though.”

Fletch turned around sharply, surprised that she was so willing to let go of the only registrar she could tolerate. The scathing glare he was met with reminded him that she was perfectly capable of running the ward singlehandedly, registrar or no registrar.

It was funny to him that she had so recently hated Frieda, and now she had carried on the tradition. Jac was to Frieda what Elliot had been to her…except with far less hugging and doughnuts.

When dinner was ready, four of five kids rushed into the kitchen eagerly, with Evie bringing up the rear far more reservedly and taking the seat closest to the door.

Jac and Fletch each cut up their respective toddler’s food for them before tucking into the rather appetizing spaghetti and meatballs, Quorn ones for Evie.

The teen was quiet this evening, though nobody really picked up on it until they were doing the dishes and Evie didn’t reply when Fletch asked her how school was. He frowned at her, wondering what was going on, but finished the dishes rather than confront it in front of Jac and the kids.

It was only once the children had dispersed and Jac had headed into the living room to turn the television on for the youngsters that he approached Evie cautiously and began to speak.

“Everything okay, darlin’?” He asked, feeling concern for his daughter.

“Everything’s fine, Dad,” she answered with a smile that didn’t quite manage to reach her eyes, dropping her head back down to her phone. “Was there something you needed?”

“You were quiet at dinner is all, sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?” He asked, seeing her shake her head virulently before he had even finished speaking. “Evie, what’s wrong?”

Nervously, she moved to take a seat at the table and put down her phone. Fletch was already beginning to make his own conclusions and he just needed her to speak, to tell him that it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as he was thinking and that she was just worried about nothing.

“We got our grades back on our bio mock today,” she mumbled awkwardly, refusing to meet his gaze. “I got a C.”

“Evie-”

“I’m really sorry! It’s the first one of the year! I’m been getting A*s in everything, I don’t even know what went so wrong but we have our papers back so I’m gonna go through it and revise everything that I did badly on. I’ll do better in the actual exam and I’ll still finish the year with good grades!” she rattled out, eager to defend herself.

“Evie, it doesn’t matter. A C is not the end of the world. A C isn’t even a fail. I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Fletch reassured, reaching to rub her shoulder as he spoke. “Why did you feel like you needed to hide this from me?”

“I’m the only one who’s actually doing alright at the moment. Ella’s still struggling to make friends, Mikey spends more time in detention than lessons, and Theo isn’t exactly looking after himself. I was just trying to be the one you didn’t _have_ to worry about,” she admitted. “Jac only likes me because she thinks I’m clever, she’s going to be so ashamed.”

 Fletch closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to take a breath before he responded.

“First of all, you’re my daughter, I am always going to worry about you but I can tell you that one not-even-that-bad grade is not going to make me worry anymore. As for Jac, she has no right to be ashamed of you and you know full well that I would put her in her place if she tried to make you feel bad, and anyway, I don’t think she’ll be ashamed at all. I think she’ll be proud of you for being unhappy with it and taking the initiative to improve rather than just being bitter about it.”

Evie allowed herself to look at him through her eyelashes, still slightly embarrassed about the grade even if nobody cared as much as she did. She couldn’t look at her father and not believe every word he was saying, he had the most sincere face on the planet.

“You think maybe she’d go through it with me?” she asked shyly.

“I think she’d be happy to,” Fletch answered, watching a smile grow on his daughter’s face as she stood and hurried towards the living room.

Fletch smiled at the thought of Evie caring so deeply about what Jac thought of her. He didn’t intend to replace Natalie, Evie was far too old to ever regard Jac as anything close to a Mum, but to have a role model, especially now that Serena was so absent from just about everything except her office, was good for her.

 


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a short one, and it's basically the oneshot that i wrote a few weeks back but hannah told me to write it anyway so if u are going to moan at anyone then moan at her

Jac snapped her head around as Evie hurried into the room, worried that Fletch had managed to injure himself putting things away or he’d set something on fire. As soon as she made it to the door however, the teen came to a very abrupt halt and casually walked in.

“Everything okay?” Jac asked, looking suspiciously over at the girl as she shifted Emma off her lap and onto the sofa beside her.

“Mmhm,” Evie replied with a broad smile. “Would you mind helping me study after these lot are in bed?”

“Of course, I will,” Jac offered, pulling her knees up to rest her chin on them and returning her attention to whatever Ella had decided they ought to watch.

It was only half an hour later that Fletch the three youngsters upstairs to shower before bedtime, leaving Evie and Jac alone in the living room.

“Wanna go grab your work?” Jac suggested, turning to face Evie and making space on the couch beside her.

Evie was back in a flash with her bio workbook, textbook, folder and exam paper in hand. She took a seat at the other end of the sofa, hiding the front of the paper from Jac’s view in the hope that she wouldn’t notice the massive C emblazoned on the front of it.

“I, uh, need to go through and figure out why I got questions wrong so that next time I don’t make the same mistakes,” she mumbled out, wondering why she had taken her Dad’s reassurance so easily when this was Jac Naylor FRCS, this was Jacula, this was the woman that even Serena was reluctant to say no to.

“Okay, pass it here and I’ll ask you any of the questions you got wrong again and we can see if you know the answers now,” Jac said nonchalantly and Evie handed over the paper without thinking, eyes fixing on Jac’s reaction; it didn’t change.

She opened it to the first page, glancing down the right hand side before asking her a question on mass change. She answered confidently and was met with a nod.

They sat there, going through the entire paper as Evie got almost every question correct and was frustrated at herself for managing to mess up so badly in the exam. She didn’t think she had been very stressed but apparently, she had.

“People with type 1 diabetes inject insulin to control their blood glucose level. A pancreas transplant is another treatment for type 1 diabetes. One risk of a pancreas transplant is organ rejection. Explain why a transplanted organ may be rejected,” Jac asked and Evie frowned at her, wondering how she could’ve got this wrong.

“The immune system recognises the transplanted pancreas as a foreign body and attacks the antigens as it perceives them as a threat to the body, this is the main cause of hyperacute, acute, _and_ chronic rejection.”

“That’s what you wrote down, and I know full well that it’s correct, so I don’t know why you were only given one mark for it,” Jac replied, furrowing her brow. “Say that you got two extra marks then.”

Evie grinned at that. She was only one mark under the grade boundary, and a B was far less of a disaster than a C.

The two continued like that for another half an hour, until Fletch poked his head around the door to tell Evie that the bathroom was free.

“Thank you, Jac,” the girl offered with a smile as she gathered her things and hurried upstairs.

Fletch flopped down onto the couch beside Jac, smiling warmly as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and glanced towards the TV. He couldn’t help but notice just how relaxed she was, had Evie not mentioned the bad grade to her at all?

“Everything go well with Evie?”

“Fine, she seemed a bit upset about her grade but it was fine, and she did better than she thought she did anyway. That girl might just be the first Fletcher to end up working in a hospital doing something other than running errands and filling out forms,” she answered in a teasing tone, a grin on her face as Fletch scoffed at her.

 “Well, if there was gonna be a clever one, it was always going to be her,” he admitted, remembering how Evie had always loved school, even when she was a kid and all she was learning was spelling and her times tables. “She definitely got all her brains from her mother.”

“Oh hush, you know you’re clever. It would take a genius to persuade even one nurse to carry on working under me and you’ve kept a whole team of them,” Jac retorted with a grin, turning to kiss his hand where is hung over her shoulder. “Stop fishing.”


	31. Chapter 31

Jac had arrived to dinner with a sarcastic grin on her face and an eagerness to eat. Fletch had clocked it immediately.

“So, what’s happened?” he asked, not bothering to maintain the pretence of cluelessness.

“Guess who’s getting married!” Jac enthused in a snarky tone, biting into a forkful of noodles and eating them with frustration. “Jackpot! Mr. Maconie!”

Fletch swallowed thickly, wondering exactly what he ought to say next. Nervously taking a bite of his ramen instead.

“Fletch! They want Emma to be flower girl! It’s going to be absolutely hideous, just like the last one was, and my poor daughter is going to have to be a part of their big, extravagant day!” Jac exclaimed through a mouthful of food.

The waiter was looking across the room at her disapprovingly and Fletch was pleased he had his back to the unsuspecting bystander, knowing that she wouldn’t take kindly to being tutted at.

He continued to eat, telling himself that it was just one of those Jac things and that she’d have stopped thinking about it by tomorrow morning but even he was doubting himself this time, she never got so riled about things like this outside of work.

It wasn’t until they had finished and he was grabbing the bill that he realised just how frustrated she was.

“What if we took all the kids on holiday? Go a few days before the wedding then when he calls to ask when to pick up Emma, I’ll tell him I thought it was the week after! Tell me I’m not a genius Fletcher, I dare you.”

 Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes at her, he focused his attention on their waiter and thanked him as they prepared to leave. Jac grabbed his hand in hers and hurried him out of the restaurant and down the street.

“Fletch, seriously, can you actually help me think of a way to get out of this?” Jac asked with a newfound seriousness to her tone.

“Jac, do you really think it’s the end of the world if Emma has to wear a slightly ugly dress and be dragged around like a doll for an afternoon? They’ll take a few photos and then you can delete it from your memory forever,” Fletch tried to reason, guiding her towards the car and practically dropping her into the passenger seat.

“Adrian, this is the end of the world. I am going to have to be there every second of the day trying to fake smile my way through a hideous day with everyone looking at me like the doting ex,” she retorted as he got in and turned the key in the ignition.

Fletch scoffed at her as he pulled away from the curb.

“Nobody is _ever_ going to look at you and see a doting ex,” he reminded her, wondering how anybody could ever see her as anything less magnificent than she truly was.

It seemed irrational to him that she could be doubtful even for a second that she would be the most beautiful thing in the room, bride present or not.

As they pulled into the drive of his house, she was still rattling on about how much of a disaster it was going to be and he couldn’t help but guilting snigger at the irony or Jonny Maconie having two _disastrous_ wedding days in a row.

When Evie asked if there was something wrong, Jac turned around and regaled the entire story again, this time with far more enthusiasm. It wasn’t a Jac thing…it was a woman thing.

“Dad, you have to go! Go looking absolutely charming and everyone will know Jac got the better end of the deal,” Evie suggested as she tucked her feet up underneath herself.

“You want me to, Jac? You know I don’t mind catching up with old Jonny boy on his big day!”

“Not the point, Fletcher! If you’re going to come then you can’t be all friendly with him, that’s the exact opposite of what you will be doing,” Jac snapped, wondering how on Earth he had got so far in life without her guidance.

Apparently, he was an entirely clueless man and would have almost nothing to do with the plan, though his attendance would still be required. Evie and Jac nattered on about what she would wear to ensure that she managed to be the centre of attention, and how exactly Jac could orchestrate every moment in order to ensure minimal time spent with and or near the bride and groom.

Fletch ducked out of the room after that, going to make himself a cup of tea and heading up for an early night since it didn’t look like there was any chance of a bit of late night television in the front room.

By 10:15, Jac had slipped into the bedroom and changed her clothes at the foot of the bed before getting under the duvet and making Fletch just half a foot away from her icy skin.

“Bloody hell, woman,” he bit out as he cautiously wrapped his arms around her and tried to warm her up.

“Sorry,” she admitted quietly. “I spent the entire night going on about Jonny and his stupid wedding, that probably isn’t what you wanted to do with your evening off.”

He kissed her shoulder lightly, buried his face there and shook his head. There was no need for words, not now when they were both so ready for sleep.


	32. Chapter 32

The countdown to the wedding began and Emma was carted off to Lord knows where in the name of preparation. Jonny picked her up and dropped her off so much that he practically became a permanent fixing on the doorstep.

Meanwhile, things at work were hectic as usual. Jac was running the ward almost singlehandedly and Fletch was drowning under the pressure of finding nurses to take on all the new vacancies that were cropping up.

The two had barely seen each other, Monday night dinners had been postponed until the two of them had less stress at work, and pretty much the only time they saw each other at the moment was on the ward or at Thursday dinners which they had, so far, refused to sacrifice.

It was the busiest week of the year so far when Jac asked Jonny to keep Emma for an extra couple of nights so that she could work late, and Fletch resorted to paying Evie to stay in and look after the kids all the time.

On Thursday morning, it was Fletch who knocked on Jac’s office door shyly. He didn’t want to be the one to do it, but he knew that they both needed it, just for this one week, at least.

“Hey, how you feeling this morning?” Jac greeted, looking across at him and wondering whether he got any more sleep than she did.

“Absolutely exhausted, which I can imagine is just same as you,” he replied, perching on the edge of her desk. “Look, I was gonna ask if you think we should reschedule dinner tonight. I know we said we wouldn’t unless we really needed to, but honestly I can’t see myself getting away before 10 tonight and even if I do, the only thing I want to do is sleep.”

“I totally agree, both of us is far too busy for it and it’s only one week. One week isn’t going to make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things,” she blurted out while on the inside, she was screaming at herself to persuade him not to cancel.

Rationally, it made no difference at all. It was one date, and they had gone on so many now that they were a part of the routine. She told herself that this wasn’t them running out of time for each other but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking.

“Somewhere posh next week to make up for it? Your choice,” he offered with a smile, standing up and heading for the door easily.

Jac dragged herself through the shift and told herself that they were still going to be in the same building, even if they couldn’t find the time to go to dinner, it wasn’t as if he was off having fun with his friends instead; he was stuck at work, same as her.

At about 5o’clock, she went to his office with a coffee in each hand and a smile. Knocking on the door sharply before letting herself in, she found him with one of his team sat on his sofa, looking rather upset about something.

“I imagined you’d be alone at this time of day, do excuse me,” she snapped out in true Naylor fashion before putting down one of the cups on his desk and fleeing without another word, inwardly rather embarrassed though she would never show it.

It wasn’t until half an hour later than Fletch came into her office with a forced smile.

“I’m sorry about that, it’s Priya’s first day and she’s having a rough time of it, was there something you need?” he asked her. “Thanks, for the coffee by the way.”

“Oh no, Fletch, I’m sorry for interrupting you! For once, I know it wasn’t me that upset her so at least there’s that,” she mused, noticing how he remained in the doorway rather than coming in. “I’m sure you have a lot to be getting on with, so I’ll see you later on.”

She is called onto the ward after one of her patients went into cardiac arrest. After getting him back into sinus rhythm, she sent him to be prepped for emergency surgery and turned to see the new nurse, Priya, giggling like a schoolgirl to Fletch.

Ignoring it, she went into surgery and got the job done as quickly as possible. An aortic dissection wasn’t going to take up her entire evening, so she left one of the theatre team with the job of closing up and returned to the ward.

It was getting late now, the sun had gone down and the ward was starting to quieten if only slightly. She wondered if _Priya_ had gone home yet, Jac already didn’t like the woman and wasn’t in the mood to cause drama.

Of course, it was just her luck that _Priya_ was sat at the nurses station, gossiping to a couple of the younger nurses. Jac walked past them without batting an eyelid for the most, it was only when she heard what they were saying that she paused.

“So, that Mr Fletcher’s quite handsome, isn’t he? Wonder if he needs some company for the long night ahead,” the new and oblivious nurse teased flirtatiously, making the other girls giggle for a moment before Jac spun on her heel and they halted, stock still.

“Sorry to disappoint, _Priya,_ ” Jac began snarkily, “but he already has company and your attendance will not be required _or_ requested on my ward again.”

The thing about Jac and Fletch was that everybody _knew_ but nobody really spoke about it, so it was common knowledge that was _never_ shared around. Even though nobody had a doubt in their mind that it was true, Jac had just provided the ultimate confirmation.

For a moment, everything on the ward seemed to go perfectly quiet, and then Priya jumped up out of her chair and started rambling out an apology and Jac simply turned to walk away.

It wasn’t until 9:45 that Fletch poked his head through her office door with a smile that told her he knew all about it. She inhaled richly, knowing that she was never going to hear the end of this, it was going to haunt her until the day she died.

“I hear somebody got a little jealous this evening,” he taunted with a grin, taking a seat on the couch.

“She was half a minute from propositioning you, I didn’t feel I was very out of line. I can’t have your thoughts wandering too far now, can I,” she joked easily, and in that moment, she realised that she hadn’t doubted him, not for a second.

There hadn’t even been a split second of her wondering if maybe he fancied Priya, if maybe he’d been flirting with her, it had never even crossed Jac’s mind.

“I’ve only got room for one medical professional in my heart, I’m afraid,” he admitted faux-glumly, rolling his eyes at the thought that _anybody_ , let alone a mid-20s something or other with more hair than personality, could even come into consideration with Jac around.


	33. Chapter 33

The morning of the wedding, Jac forced Fletch into a new suit. She dressed herself in a stunning emerald dress that was practically a gown and slipped on a pair of heels. Evie managed to take a few pictures of the pair, against Jac’s wishes.

“We need to go, Emma will need help getting ready. I have _no_ idea why Jonny insisted on her staying there last night, it only means things are going to take longer,” Jac grumbled as they made their way to the car and started the journey to the venue.

They arrived at 11:30, and the ceremony was scheduled to start at 12 so they were already stretched for time. Jac asked for directions at the reception, rushing off to find Emma and telling Fletch that she’d meet him in the chapel as soon as she could.

Fifteen minutes later, she took the seat beside him with a smile and reached for his hand. The two remained sat like that, their hands intertwined and curled close to one another, as the ceremony began and Emma walked down the aisle proudly, scattering rose petals.

Jac’s cheeks were met with a tint of colour as she watched her little girl with the pride only a mother can really know.

They barely paid attention to the ceremony, losing themselves in their own heads as vows were said and rings were exchanged. It was a miracle that Jac got through the entire thing without falling asleep, and yet here she was dragging herself through it like the well-behaved ex that she was.

Despite their masterful and ingenious plans of sabotage, Jac had settled simply on being there with Fletch, not drawing attention to herself but making sure that anyone who dared to look saw a woman who was entirely happy in her new and improved life, free of Jonny Maconie.

“Drinks!” Fletch suggested as soon as they arrived at the reception, making a beeline for the bar and leaving Jac to lurk by the door and wait for his return.

“Jac Naylor, as she lives and breathes!”

The redhead snapped around at the sound of a familiar voice, smiling warmly as she pulled Mo into a hug. Suddenly, the entire affair seemed just a tad more bearable.

Fletch came back five minutes later to find the two women deeply embedded in conversation. He rolled his eyes, wondering what Jac had even been worrying about, and approached them to pass Jac a glass of Merlot.

“Fletch!” Mo exclaimed happily, pulling her old colleague into a quick hug before releasing him. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think you and Jonny ever got that close!”

“I’m playing plus one,” he admitted with a grin, hoping she would catch the hint and skate right over the topic. Not a chance.

“Oh my God! You two? I never saw that coming in a million years! Jac Naylor with five kids, God knew that day was never coming!” 

Jac quickly made her excuses and hurried off to find Emma, taking Fletch in tow. Emma was sat on her new step-mother’s knee, eating a bar of chocolate much to Jac’s dismay if the meal was supposed to start so soon.

She whisked Emma up and cuddled her, making a fuss out of how well she’d done coming down the aisle. No matter what this day was, Emma was going to enjoy herself if it was the _only_ thing that Jac could ensure.

“Jac, I just wanted to thank you for being such a help today,” Jonny offered sincerely, and she glanced up at him for only a moment before returning her attention to Emma. “Well the meal’s set to start in 5 minutes so we’d better get to our seats.”

Fletch stepped in, persuading Jac to leave Emma and return their table.

Luckily their table seemed to have been saved for all the people who didn’t want to be there, all the people that they didn’t really expect to turn up, so they had it to themselves apart from one old woman on her own who snuck out as soon as the food had arrived, and she could stash it in her handbag.

“I told you this wasn’t going to be a complete disaster, apart from the floral arrangements and the bridesmaids’ dresses, I’d say everything has been quite easy on the eyes,” Fletch joked as they ate. “Are you glad you didn’t try and ruin it now?”

“I am glad Emma had a good day, and I’m glad that some other poor soul is stuck with Jonny for the rest of her life now. That doesn’t mean I don’t regret listening to your advice and being reasonable,” she answered, sipping her wine. “He finally got what he always wanted.”

“What do you mean?” Fletch asked, slightly lost in what she was saying.

“All he ever dreamt of, the perfect little family, the big white wedding, the textbook happy ending. A few false starts but he got here and he did it,” she mused, accepting in her head that she hadn’t ruined him.

“You’ll get it too, Jac. Not the perfect little family and the big white wedding and the textbook happy ending, that isn’t your style. But whatever it is you’re looking for, whatever that secret dream of yours is that you’re still too scared to admit to anybody, you’re going to get it,” Fletch vowed and her heart melted.

If he had asked her to marry him right there and then, she couldn’t have said no…wouldn’t have. He was right, happy endings weren’t her scene; her life’s goal had always been to become the best cardiothoracic surgeon in all history, but that wasn’t her dream. Her dream was something much simpler, and it seemed almost infantile but all she wanted was a place that felt like home.

The speeches happened. Everybody started dancing. Jac and Fletch grabbed a tired Emma and said their goodbyes. The drive home was quiet.

Jac let herself smile a little as she fell asleep in bed that night, this was her happy ending. Jonny wasn’t the only one with that kind of luck.


	34. Chapter 34

It was a Tuesday and Jac was as stressed as she ever had been. Gaskell had insisted on her presence in theatre this morning and she had three more operations to try and squeeze into her day, plus picking up Emma by 7 from the creche, and getting through a small mountain of paperwork.

The morning was tolerably exhausting. She dragged herself through it and was grateful to see a cup of coffee on her desk when she slipped inside for a five minute break before she was dragged away to deal with another complication or to discuss surgery with another on her ever-growing list of patients.

She chugged the entire cup in less than thirty seconds, so desperate for the caffeine to enter her system and give her a boost, if only for a few moments.

“Ms Naylor, it’s Edward Tanner,” Frieda announced as she walked into the office and breathed out. “He says he has doubts about theatre and he wants to speak to his surgeon again.”

Frieda was just as tired as she was. Wherever Jac went, Frieda followed, which meant if Jac was rushed off her feet, Frieda was just as busy. Between the two of them, the entire ward was tiptoeing around and trying not to hit any nerves.

With gritted teeth, Jac made her way to the side room in which Mr Tanner was situated, and proceeded to talk to him about every intricate detail of the operation, including how she’d done it over 500 times before and the risk of complication was as minute as tangibly possible.

One problem out of the way, only for another to arise. Jac managed to pull herself through the day like that, as if the world was a game of Whack-A-Mole and she was working towards a high score.

4:48pm. She was in theatre, leading a paediatric heart transplant and hoping that nothing went wrong. Her final surgery of the day was supposed to start at 4o’clock and yet here she was, there was no chance of her getting into any paperwork tonight, and she was going to have to call Jonny to pick up Emma.

“Jac,” greeted Fletch’s voice over the speakers, drawing her attention. “I get off in ten minutes, shall I take Emma home with me so she isn’t stuck in the creche on her own?”

“If I needed you to babysit, Mr. Fletcher, I would’ve asked. Emma’s perfectly fine and I am perfectly capable of caring for my own child,” she snapped back and in her mind, she wasn’t sure if it was the day she had had or something else that had made her react so harshly.

“Okay, I know you are. I was just thinking that it might lighten your load a little bit,” Fletch offered tentatively, noticing that Jac was still focused entirely on her work and hadn’t stopped her movements.

“Well, thank you for the offer but I am not your charge and neither is my daughter. We got on just fine before you came along, and we’ll continue to do just fine without you,” Jac bit out, hoping that he would leave rather than start a fully blown confrontation in front of the entire operating team.

Luckily for her, he stalked out of the observation bay and left her alone.

She successfully completed the procedure without anymore hiccoughs and dragged herself straight to the theatre next door to begin her final surgery of the day.

Though she would never admit it aloud, she did rush just a little. She could quite literally complete an atherectomy with her eyes closed and so it was no detriment to the patient that she may have allowed herself to work just slightly faster than usual.

It wasn’t until said patient decided to crash on the table that an issue arose. He slipped into VF three times and was pulled back three times, until eventually she’d completed the procedure and he was wheeled off to post-op where Frieda was going to be on hand to resuscitate again if she had to.

By the time she was relieved from theatre, it was 7:45 and she wondered why the creche hadn’t called up to ask her when Emma was being collected. Perhaps Jonny had turned up out of the blue, though it felt rather unlikely.

Opening the door to her office, she found Emma sat on the couch with a grin on her face and Sarah in her hand. She balked at the sight, the lights were off, and her daughter appeared to be alone.

“Emma, sweetheart, who brought you to my office?” she asked nervously, flicking on the light switch.

“SHUSH!” Emma shouted, giggling as she hopped off the sofa and ran towards Jac’s desk, looking underneath it. “Found you!”

Fletch’s head popped up and he looked ruefully towards Jac, meeting her gaze and hoping that she wasn’t going to cause a fuss.

“Why don’t you go and see Ms Petrenko, Emma?” Jac suggested, telling her daughter exactly where Frieda would be found and watching as the girl toddled past her and over to the staff room, waiting until she was out of earshot. “What are you still doing here, Fletch?”

“I wasn’t going to leave her here now, was I! I don’t know what’s put you in such a foul mood but it’s not fair to take it out on Emma, even if you are going to take it out on me. She would’ve been stuck on her own, trying to occupy herself for hours, and you know full well that I don’t think of her as my charge,” he told her, shaking his head at her in disapproval. “I was trying to help because that’s what we do, Jac. Us two, since before all of this, since the day I became DoN, we have had each other’s backs.”

She pressed the door into its frame calmly, taking a couple of steps towards him but maintaining a generous distance.

“Today’s been dreadful and I took that out on you. I know I was a cow, and I think after all this time, you know that at the heart of everything, I’m trying my best not to be. Thank you for staying with Emma tonight, truly, I don’t know why I even said no. I think I just wanted to prove to myself that I could still do it alone.”

“Of course you can. You’re Jac Naylor, you could run the world singlehandedly if the need arose…but it hasn’t. I’m here to help and I don’t want you to think that means you’ve lost your independence; nobody doubts you’re still capable of anything on Earth, but you don’t have to do it all alone, okay?” he reasoned kindly, stepping into her space and meeting her gaze.

Jac stayed at home that night. Even if her heart knew that she was _allowed_ to rely on him a bit, her head was convinced that Fletch was a parasite meant to leech all of her independence and turn her into a needy, irritating human being.


	35. Chapter 35

Therapy had become part of the routine. It was only when Sarah suggested that she bring Fletch in for a session that she was reminded of how it fitted into the rest of the world.

So far, all it had really been was her talking about her day, changing little things about her life each week, barely noticeable at all, but this was a new beast entirely. Talking about her week, about her _feelings,_ in front of Fletch.

Of course, she had said yes, more because she didn’t want to appear that she _wasn’t_ ready than because she really felt she _was._

“Sarah wants you to come to therapy tomorrow, normal time, you think you can make it?” Jac asked nonchalantly over dinner, hoping he would be as casual about it as she was. Her intention was to continue telling herself that it wasn’t even a slightly big deal, for as long as she could.

“Of course, I don’t have much planned for the day so I’m sure I can find some time to squeeze you in,” he replied in jest, sipping his lemonade.

“It’s not a haircut,” she answered with a raise of her eyebrows. “It shouldn’t be for too long. I’m not entirely sure what she wants to talk about, but I thought you wouldn’t mind as long as it doesn’t eat into your evening.”

They went on as usual for the rest of the night and didn’t say another word on the topic, much to Jac’s relief. What happened in therapy, stayed in therapy, but Fletch didn’t know that rule yet.

It wasn’t until the next day that she really started to get antsy. She was tempted to call and say that Fletch was busy and they ought to reschedule, and to spin a similar story for Fletch. Of course, she wouldn’t, because it would only be exposed later, and she would be forced to admit the truth.

At five o’clock, she headed downstairs to the psychiatry department and waited awkwardly outside of Sarah’s office. Part of her wanted Fletch to forget, just so she could pretend to be angry at him for an hour and not have to talk about anything that really mattered, but sure enough, he turned up barely a minute after her.

“Ready?” he suggested warmly, waiting for her nod before reaching for the door handle and ushering her in first.

Introductions were brief, and a little awkward. Perhaps because Fletch was aware of the fact that this complete stranger knew every detail of their private life. Still, he smiled and took a seat, trying to remain focused on why they were here.

“So, I asked you to bring Fletch here today to see primarily, whether you would agree. Opening up to the people closest to you is one of the biggest steps, and you appeared eager to take it. Have the pair of you been discussing what is said in therapy, at all?” Sarah began, letting her glasses fall down her nose slightly as she dropped her eyes to her notepad.

“Occasional things here and there; either because I felt like I wanted to admit it to somebody in my real life, or because I felt he had a right to know because it regarded him in some way,” Jac responded confidently.

“And have you ever wanted to know more, or less, about what was happening with Jac, Fletch?” Sarah asked, and he could feel Jac’s gaze burning his skin.

“No,” he replied honestly, “it’s her recovery, not mine. It’s her business and if she wants to let me in then I am grateful for what she trusts me with, but as long as she is happy and nothing seems to be wrong, this is about her, not me.”

Jac rested her hand on his knee, smiling just slightly. Sarah noticed the movement and her expression shifted, though Fletch couldn’t tell entirely what it had meant.

They proceeded to talk, mainly about their relationship and how it functioned. The question was raised whether Jac’s mental state had effected their relationship at any point and that opened the door to the number of almost-breakups they had been through as a result of her attachment issues.

Somewhere within the hour, Jac had shifted so that there was a gap between her and Fletch. This sort of a discussion was not something that she often engaged in, and it was giving her a headache to think about the fact that he might try and continue the conversation after they had left.

“Well time’s up for this week. Back to normal next week but if you’re agreeable, Fletch, I might get Jac to bring you in again at some point soon. Would that be okay?”

Fletch nodded, reaching to shake the therapist’s hand before standing and heading for the door. Jac followed close behind him and wondered how long he would hold off before bringing up the impending discussion that she knew was coming.

At the lift, he asked whether she fancied chilli con carne for dinner and things seemed normal. In the back of her mind, Jac was still wondering when he was going to start talking about it; maybe at dinner, maybe not until they’d gone to bed so she had no excuse.

“Don’t you want to talk about it?” She snapped halfway through the 10o’clock news, sick of waiting for him to open the conversation.

“Therapy’s insular. I’m not going to talk about it unless you want to, it isn’t going to become dinner table conversation now, just because it’s something that we’ve done together,” Fletch reassured, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Jac shyly shook her head, curling into his side as she let out the breath she had been holding ever since they had walked into the Sarah’s office this afternoon. He truly was a Godsend, and she didn’t know what she had done to deserve him, but she would never stop being grateful.

Maybe he would be welcome at therapy a little more often, if it was what he wanted. He had been there with her through the darkest days, it was only fair that he got to hear her shed some light on them too.


	36. Chapter 36

When Fletch suggested that they go away with the kids for the weekend, Jac had been reluctant. At first her excuse had been that Jonny wouldn’t agree to her eating into his time with Emma but when he had, she hadn’t had a leg to stand on.

Eventually, after hours of pestering from all five children, she had agreed and said that London would be nice since none of the kids had ever been before. (And there was enough to do that she could get away from everybody for a short while if she wanted to.)

“I’m quite excited to see the science museum, and I’d like to go to the V&A if we have time,” Evie had suggested enthusiastically and Jac was pleased to see that at least somebody in the car had good taste in culture.

“Hamleys! Hamleys! Hamleys!” Ella chanted, slapping her thighs as she encouraged Emma and Theo to join in with her.

All Mikey was interested in was sponging as many new clothes he could out of his Dad, which Jac could certainly have been _more_ displeased with.

The drive was the most strenuous part of the entire weekend; Evie and Mikey spent two and a half hours fighting for control of the music, Ella got car sick and they had to sit in a lay-by for twenty minutes until she started to feel better, the youngsters were actually the least of the trouble and spent most of the journey asleep.

Fletch sympathised with her. A big family was never exactly her style and she was sucking it up just to make him happy, he had to be thankful for that.

When they finally arrived at the hotel, Jac was more glad about being out of the car than anything else. Miraculously, the hotel hadn’t managed to mess anything up so they had three separate rooms in which Jac could take five minutes to listen very intensely to the quiet of the double room.

There was a specific spot by her right temple that felt as though there was a surgical drill boring through it.

“Can we have McDonalds for dinner?” Mikey pleaded, putting on the customary Fletcher pout.

Fletch gave in rather easily, driving them to a dining complex a few minutes down the road and pulling in. It was his way of being considerate; there was no way that Jac was going to eat McDonalds and neither was Evie, come to think of it, so lucky for them, there was a Yo! Sushi just next door.

They agreed that they would go and order respectively and eat on the benches outside. It was quite warm for the middle of May so they ought to make the most of the weather.

“Not a chance, Little Miss,” Jac chastised, picking Emma up and carrying her towards the entrance.

They ordered extra, enough for Theo and Ella to try some if they liked, and cucumber maki for Fletch as he had requested. Mikey was the only would who wouldn’t be caught dead so close to something that _looked_ healthy.

Fletch turned up with a paper bag that didn’t appear to have too much in, a miracle by all accounts.

It actually didn’t look like too deadly of a meal, apart from the obscene number of chicken nuggets on the table. Between four of them, they had racked up 30 nuggets and Jac looked slightly appalled, focusing on her own meal.

“Mikey, stay on your side of the table with your disgusting death bites!” Evie snapped as he tried to dip his nugget in her soy sauce. “Jac and Emma make good decisions, why am I stuck with carnivorous beasts for siblings?”

“Hey now, Theo’s eating avo maki, isn’t he?” Fletch defended. “Don’t lump us all in with him!”

“Dad, you currently have a dead baby chicken in your mouth. Please at least _try_ to conceal the evidence before attempting to defend yourself,” she responded sarcastically, making Jac choke on her mouthful.

They ate, tidied up after themselves, and piled back into the car.

All of the kids were so excited about the prospect of having a television in their bedroom that they settled in early, leaving Jac and Fletch to entertain themselves for the evening. It was only 8o’clock, three of five kids were already asleep and the other two were looking after themselves, they finally had a little peace and quiet.

 Jac savoured the time alone with him. Normally their solitude was always a wall away from another screaming match, and there was no real privacy for them the majority of the time. They’d emerged from the honeymoon phase pretty swiftly, so this was a rare treat for the both of them.

“Can you believe it took coming all the way to London just to get an evening to ourselves for once?”

They were laid in a post-coital bliss, wondering how long it could possibly last. Jac had her head rested on Fletch’s bare chest, a hint of a smile on her face as she allowed her eyes to slip shut and fell into an easy sleep.


	37. Chapter 37

The next morning, they headed straight for Oxford Street, simply to keep Mikey happy if he was going to be dragged around museums all afternoon. He begged his father for a dozen new things and of course, Fletch gave in too easily.

Evie picked up a couple of things for herself, as did Ella, but the kids couldn’t have been more disinterested if they tried. It wasn’t until they got to Hamleys that either of them decided to take any notice, at which point they were running around the shop causing havoc.

Emma was told she could have one thing, and she selected a new plush pig, to be Sarah’s boyfriend, apparently.

Nobody was entirely aware of the struggle that getting five kids through central London on the tube was going to be. Somehow, they managed it, and Mikey, already grumbling about how heavy his bags were, traipsed after everybody towards the science museum’s entrance.

Eagerly, Evie hurried off in the direction the history of medicine exhibition. Mikey continued to moan at his Dad though for once, Fletch wasn’t listening to a word he said. All of the youngsters seemed to be enjoying themselves and it was nice to be able to wander around.

“Happy?” Fletch asked, smiling as Jac took his hand and nodded.

They made their way through the entire museum, ignoring Mikey’s incessant whining as they tried to enjoy themselves. When they reached the end of their route, Evie asked sweetly if they had time to go to the Royal London Hospital Museum on the way back to the hotel.

“Why don’t I take Mikey and the others home, ey? There’s no point in listening to then moan for another hour when Evie could actually enjoy herself. Or you can take them back and I’ll stick with Evie, if you like,” Fletch suggested, turning slightly as though the kids might not hear the discussion.

“I’ll take Evie and you take the rest, as long as you’re sure you can manage on your own, I can take Emma with us if you like.” Jac offered, turning her attention back to a patiently waiting Evie.

 “Nah, she’s fine. Aren’t you, little madam!” Fletch swept up Emma and gathered all of the kids together. “I’ll see you in a bit then, text me when you get off the tube.”

They parted with a nonchalant peck and each headed for the door, walking in different directions down the street.     

“Do you really care about all this stuff? Or are you just trying to make your Dad believe that you’re serious about medicine?” Jac asked, mostly out of curiosity.

“Of course, I care,” Evie replied indignantly, frowing slightly at the suggestion that she would act falsely. “Dad would let me study medicine if I decided the day before university applications went out. I’ve never met anybody more supportive, I don’t need to lie for him to believe in me.”

“I was only asking,” Jac defended, rolling her eyes. “So, speaking of university, have you started thinking yet?”

Evie nodded shyly, watching her feet as they walked down the street. There wasn’t an inkling of timidity in the girl and alas, quiet as a mouse.

“Maybe Queen Mary’s, or UCL. I don’t want to go too far from home and Oxford or Cambridge seems like it’s aiming too high. I have time, I don’t even have to make my GCSE decisions until next month,” Evie admitted shyly, and Jac couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she was being so quiet. “Who even knows if I have to think about university, if I fail all my GCSEs then I don’t have to worry, and I can just become a HCA or something.”

“Evie Fletcher, no student of mine will ever become a HCA. Over my dead body! You are going to do brilliantly and you’re going to breeze through, then in eleven years, you’re going to walk into Holby on your first day as an F1 and I will be there to work you to the bone every day until you’re up to scratch. At which point I can finally retire and leave Darwin in your capable hands, yes?”

 The teen swallowed thickly and nodded, pleased to see that they had arrived at the tube station and she had an excuse to change the subject.  

Things between them relaxed after that. Evie asked all sorts of questions, and Jac answered them all with a smile. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday and she had expected things to be rather quiet, Jac still managed to bump in to somebody she recognised; Mr Winston Richley, one of the biggest names in cardiothoracic surgery and he just so _happened_ to be in the same place as her.

He greeted her and the two shared a brief conversation, though Jac used Evie as an excuse to cut it short, saying that they ought to be heading home.

“Who was that? You didn’t seem to like him very much,” Evie pondered as they made their way back towards the tube station.

“The man who makes the world go round. He practically pays my wages, and he’s not my biggest fan ever since I declined his offer to transfer to co-lead his ward at LBH,” Jac explained, flicking her head around as she checked for traffic before crossing the road.

It was starting to get dark by the time they got back to the hotel and Evie was starving. Fletch corralled everybody downstairs to the restaurant and they ate eagerly, all rather exhausted by the long day they had just had.

Tomorrow, it was back to Holby, back to normality, back to work and school.


	38. Chapter 38

Frieda was getting the brunt of Jac’s bad mood at work. Her boss really was doing everything she could to make the Slav’s life hell. She came to work every day and she did her job and still, Jac treated her appallingly.

She might have cared more if she believed it was personal. It was just Jac being Jac.

Things had been tough recently, for everybody, and she was just glad that she still had a job to turn up to every morning.

“Ms Naylor, surgery’s scheduled for ten minutes, are you ready to scrub in?” Frieda asked as she entered Jac’s office and found the consultant looking rather bemused.

“On my way now, Petrenko. You’re still leading, yes?” Jac replied, receiving a curt nod from Frieda as she made her way towards the door and walked down the corridor towards the scrub room.

Despite how much pressure they seemed to constantly be under, Jac still found the time to push Frieda close to breaking point just for the fun of it. Somewhere deep inside though, Frieda was grateful that Jac had the faith to challenge her.

The patient on the table had come in from an RTA and had managed to get a sheet of his windscreen lodged in his chest. There was an aortic tear, and his mitral valve was irreparable. Frieda had started out well, she had replaced the mitral valve without any issue at all, and it was only once she moved onto the aortic repair that came into bother.

He was bleeding out too fast for her to do anything. Suction was failing to clear the cavity and she was going in blind, after fifteen seconds of struggling, she looked to Jac for guidance.

“I won’t be here to fix your mess next time, Petrenko, this is your responsibility,” she stated sharply, clenching her jaw as she watched the patient’s blood pressure continue to fall. After another 60 seconds, she knew she had to intervene. “Move, his organs are dying.”

In a matter of seconds, she had clamped the artery and patched the tear. With an air of contempt, she stalked out of theatre and told Petrenko to close without killing the poor man.

 She snapped off her surgical gloves and threw them into the bin, wondering how she had failed to see this degree of incompetence in her pupil. Petrenko had proved herself, she had shown that she was a talented surgeon and she still failed to seal an aortic tear by herself. It was ridiculous.

Heading back to her office, she knew that Frieda was going to argue with her. If there was one thing that Frieda wasn’t, it was afraid of Jac in any capacity.

“What the hell was that?” Frieda snapped almost on cue as she walked into the office and slammed the door shut. “I looked to you for help because I couldn’t get control. If that man wakes up and he’s suffered complications, I will not hesitate to throw you under the bus. You are my superior and I asked you for help, your stupid attempt to get me to prove myself may have cost a man his liver.”

“Don’t hold me accountable for your failings, Petrenko. You said you could lead that operation, you told me that you were completely capable, and _you_ were wrong. If you are going to lead an operation on _my_ ward then you better be damn sure you could’ve done it without me there to babysit you and clean up your mess afterwards!”

Frieda met her gaze with fury in her eyes like Jac had never seen.

“Maybe that operation was tougher than I expected it to be, maybe I hadn’t anticipated the risk of a major bleed, but _you_ are the one that is making an innocent man pay for my mistake. You were right there Jac and you could’ve taken over and just put me on scut duty for a week, but instead you put a man’s future in my hands and _that_ was not fair.”

 Jac demanded that Frieda leave her office. Whether she was at fault or not, she would not be held account by her own pupil, not if her life depended on it. Frieda could go to Fletch, or she could go to Serena, and she could make a complaint and then perhaps Jac would begin to take a word she said seriously.

Unlucky for her, her own imagination had played her.

Seven hours later, Serena Campbell stormed into her office with a presence like thunder and an awkward Frieda at her side.

“Guess who’s post-op CT showed that his liver’s failing. Well done, Miss Naylor, you’ve ruined another life today!” Serena greeted sarcastically, staring Jac down with an impressive measure of disgrace. “His family are with him and they’re all about to be informed. All we can hope is that they don’t want to make a formal complaint, or your head is well and truly on the chopping board.”

 “You actually went to the Acting CEO because you’re mad at me? I didn’t think I was working with a child, Petrenko,” Jac snarked, removing her glasses and setting them down on her desk.

“Now is no time to be criticising Dr. Petrenko, Ms Naylor. Whether a complaint is made or not, there will be an in-house investigation into your conduct today, because quite frankly, it’s irreprehensible that such an experienced consultant could behave so immaturely.”

Serena stalked out of her office and Frieda followed, pulling the door shut behind her. Jac realised in that moment that she had well and truly messed up, that the line she had been toeing for twenty years had finally been crossed.


	39. Chapter 39

Things were tense for the next twenty-four hours, and she kept Fletch at arm’s length to make sure she wouldn’t be distracted from the matter at hand.

She was called to Serena’s office at noon the following day, where she found Frieda already waiting for her.

“Ms Naylor, so kind of you to join us,” Serena drawled, watching as Jac closed the door behind her. “Why don’t you take a seat so we can discuss?”

“Why don’t we skip the niceties?” Jac retorted, dropping into a chair and glaring at Serena expectantly.

“Mr Rowden has expressed no desire to make a complaint. He has been added to the transplant list and frankly seems far too relieved about being alive to care whether you botched his surgery,” Serena explained and Jac gave a visible sigh of relief. “However, that doesn’t mean that _I_ will be letting what happened yesterday fall under the radar. You put a patient at risk, Jac, and that is at no point acceptable.”

Frieda made some massive speech about how she greatly she valued Jac’s trust in her, and that she had been caught off guard by yesterday’s events. The majority of the words went straight over Jac’s head, she was too busy being relieved that she wasn’t being dragged into a malpractice investigation.

It was only when Serena demanded to know what we intended to do in order to resolve her actions that she returned her attention to the room.

“In future, I will endeavour not to push Ms Petrenko, or any of my colleagues, beyond their capabilities. I expected too much of her and I recognise that, and I regret that I put either of us in this position.”

Jac had to bite back a laugh at the way the two women balked at her. It wasn’t quite an apology, but it was the closest that either of them had ever heard come from a Naylor’s mouth.

“Certainly. Well, I’ll be keeping a close eye on you in the coming weeks, Ms. Naylor, I don’t want to see a repeat of anything _close_ to this, you understand me?”

Whether remorseful or not, Jac refused to be chastised. She stood and left without another word.

Back on Darwin, she headed straight for Fletch’s office and let herself in. He stood up at the sound of his door opening and she walked straight into him, wrapping her arms around his torso and breathing steady at the way he held her closer to him so instinctively.

He held her for what felt like an age, breaking away only to push the door shut and give them some semblance of privacy.

“What’s going on? I knew something was off but I didn’t know it was anything this big,” he asked, concerned for her as he guided her towards the small couch and sat down beside her.

“I endangered a man’s life yesterday because I was trying to push Frieda. I pushed her too hard and a patient paid for my mistake and now Frieda probably never wants to work under me again and Campbell’s got her beady eye on me at all times. I thought everything was actually going alright for once but it’s falling apart all over again,” she admitted, ignoring the lump that was rising in her throat and forcing it back down.

Fletch took her hand in his, clutched it tightly so that she could think about something other than what had happened for a moment. It broke his heart to see her like this, to see her doubting herself so entirely, but there was nowhere he would rather be than with her in this moment.

“Frieda knows you were only doing what’s best for her, she’ll take you back in a heartbeat. Serena can get off her high horse if she thinks she’s never had a bad day and put a patient at risk. And that patient, I know you’ll do everything you can to fix whatever mistake you made. We all have bad days, Jac, you just blame yourself more than anybody else ever could.”

They stayed there, sitting in silence, for a long time. The entire ward must have seen her walk in - she hadn’t exactly been discreet about it – so nobody dared to interrupt the pair unless lives truly did depend upon it.

Jac eventually straightened herself up and braced herself to face the ward. It was days like these when she missed being a heartless bitch, when she could’ve gotten on with her day and not batted an eyelid at Frieda’s infantile threats.

Days like this reminded her of how much she needed other people now. Without Fletch, she would’ve crumbled, and a part of her still hated that.

She returned to her office and got on with her day as usual, and when Frieda walked in to ask for her opinion on some CT results, she was almost relieved to see that everything was normal with her too.

“Frieda,” Jac called, stopping the registrar in her tracks as she turned for the door. “I’m here, if you ever need a second opinion or help with a patient, or if you need to take a break sometime.”

The sincerity in Jac’s eyes was so rare that it stuck out like a sore thumb, Frieda gawped at her and wondered if Naylor really had been replaced by a clone. One hiccough in surgery wouldn’t melt the Ice Queen, and yet here she was, with just a hint of warmth about her being.

 _Maybe it’s Fletch,_ she thought, and Jac could’ve told her just how right she was.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is filler. i actually have a cute idea for the next one so i just kind of smashed this one out quickly. things are gonna slow down a bit now that classes start again on monday and i have deadlines coming up

Jonny called on a Tuesday afternoon, asking if he could come over and see Emma for a couple of hours because he had a surprise for her. The surprise was that Lydia was pregnant, and he wanted to do it during the week so that Emma had time to accept it if she was upset.

“She’s not at home right now Jonny, so you can’t. Fletch is dropping her off at 6 so you can come by then if you like,” Jac suggested, rolling her eyes as she poured boiling water over a teabag.

“What do you mean she’s at Fletch’s? She’s your daughter, not his, Jac!” Jonny snapped at her. “I’ll go and pick her up and she can stay here tonight if you don’t have time to look after her yourself.”

“Excuse me?” Jac demanded, slamming the kettle back into its base. “She’s there because her friends are there, because I thought it might be nice for her to spend some time with Theo and Bella since she never gets to see them outside of creche. Don’t you dare question my parenting, Jonny, not when you’re only ever there if it suits you.”

Jac managed to burn herself on the handle of her mug, moving to run it under the cold tap and she failed to pay attention to Jonny’s ranting. All he was talking about was how much he’d been there for Emma after Jac had been shot, and how much he’d done to help.

“What do you want, Jonny? A medal? She’s _your_ daughter. It’s your job to parent her, and you don’t get to question how I let her spend her week when it’s quite literally none of your business as long as she arrives to you on a Friday afternoon with a smile on her face and food in her belly.”

“Uh, this conversation is over. I’ll be by at 6 to speak to her,” Jonny finished, hanging up the call and leaving the dial tone ringing in Jac’s ear.

She slammed her phone down on the kitchen counter face down, grumbling to herself about how inconsiderate he was being. It was only another forty-five minutes until Fletch dropped Emma off and she would have to see Jonny face to face. If he tried to start a confrontation, she was determined not to lose control.

After taking a deep breath, she reached for her phone and sent Fletch a quick text:

_Any chance of bringing Emma a bit early? Long story, I’ll explain when you get here x_

Within a couple of minutes, she received a reply:

_Sure, Bella and Max got picked up twenty minutes ago. Leaving in 5 x_

Why couldn’t Jonny be even marginally more like him? Why couldn’t he actually _help_ Jac rather than hinder her for the first time in a short eternity? Thank Christ that at least one man in her life was worth his salt.

She sips at her tea and waits patiently, hoping she can persuade Fletch to stay until Jonny has been and had his ‘chat’ with Emma.

At 5:24, Fletch lets himself in using the spare key that he permitted months back simply to make life easier. He heads straight through to the kitchen to find Jac with her head in her hands and stress pressed in the crease of her brow.

“Everything okay?” Fletch asked curiously, kissing her cheek casually before jumping up onto the island and taking a seat.

“Jonny rang and decided to have a go. Apparently I’m letting Emma spend too much time with you and the kids and I’m being a bad mother. I told him where to stick it but he’s coming over at six to tell Emma about the baby and I don’t really want to face him alone or I know I’ll say something harsh.”

“He said what?” Fletch asked, recoiling slightly in shock at the accusation. “Jonny’s always been such a good guy, why the hell would he be rude about something like that?”  

She raised an eyebrow at him, reminding him of exactly who he was speaking to.

“He spent a large portion of Emma’s life trying to get her away from me. Nothing would please him more than to watch me prove myself an unfit mother and to whisk _my_ daughter away into his perfect new life that he’s building,” Jac snapped, and though she didn’t want to believe the worst of Jonny after everything he had done for her, she couldn’t help but worry.

Fletch stayed quiet, knowing that there were no words that she needed to hear. His only role in this was his presence, and that was enough to keep Jac from ripping her own hair out.

They behaved normally from then, talking about how things were with the kids, and how Mikey’s parents’ evening had gone as Emma played with her Polly Pocket and babbling on about her day with Theo. Before they knew it, the doorbell rang and Jac rose to go and let Jonny in.

“She’s in the front room,” Jac offered, waving him in and shutting the door behind him. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

He was there for no more than fifteen minutes, and he left without saying another word to Jac, instead choosing to let himself out.

Emma seemed unfazed by the idea of a new baby. She was so used to spending her time with the Fletcher kids that it was practically second nature to her now. Having an extra kid around the house at Jonny’s was going to make things more normal if anything.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fletch offered as he headed for the front door, leaving Jac and Emma to an evening in alone.

Whether Jonny believed it or not, Jac was still very adamant in not allowing Fletch to become a _parent_ to Emma in any capacity. That was a line she was unwilling to cross, because it was a two-way street and she was no mother of five.


	41. Chapter 41

“Evie, I understand that Jac is much better at homework and revision than I am, but I assure you I am still perfectly capable of attending parents’ evening without her guidance,” Fletch drawled at the dinner table, ignoring the way Jac pursed her lips smugly.

“You know he’s right, Evie, there’s not much he can do to mess up speaking to your teachers. That’s beyond even his skills of incompetency.”

Fletch rolled his eyes, wondering when the national holiday of Picking On Fletch Day had been announced.

“Can’t you at least give him some notes on what questions to ask? He just sits there, listening to them tell him about what a good student I am and then smiles and moves onto the next one, there’s no discussion, he may as well get sent a letter!” Evie moaned, shovelling baked beans into her mouth.

It had taken days of wearing both Fletch and Jac down, but by Friday evening, they were all on their way to Evie’s school. Evie was looking down at her phone nervously, walking along as they all made their way to the sports hall.

Despite the fact that she had wanted Jac to come, had wanted her to listen to what the teachers had to say so she could help her improve her grades, Evie was quite frankly bricking it.

Fletch set the other three children upon a bench by the door, where they would wait and behave perfectly until he was ready to leave. Jac felt rather ridiculous; this wasn’t something she’d experienced before and she was quite convinced she was going to manage to muck it up.

“That’s Mr Canoli,” Evie grumbled as a grey-haired man in a suit swept past them.

From what Jac and Fletch understood, Mr Canoli was the chemistry teacher who did everything in his power to make Evie’s life hell. His reasoning was unbeknownst to them, and to Evie apparently.

As the clock hit 5:10, Evie dragged the two of them towards a table with a pleasant looking woman, her English teacher. Apparently, Evie was the perfect student and she was doing incredibly in all of her work and there was nothing for them to worry about, a good start.

The next few meetings all went extremely well; it wasn’t until they approached Evie’s biology teacher that things became tense. Jac already had some contempt for the man, hearing the amount of mistakes from Evie and she was unlikely to mince her words.

“Mr Fletcher! And…”

“Jac Naylor,” Jac filled in for him, taking a seat and extending her hand across the table.

“Ah, Ms Naylor. I’ve heard a lot about you, it’s a pleasure,” Mr Ilwich greeted with a forced smile. “Now, let’s talk about our budding biologist, shall we? Top of the class, always up to date with the work, extremely enthusiastic about the subject. There’s frankly nothing I can fault her on, any questions for me?”

“Do you think the workload is heavy enough? I just find that Evie only comes home with work to do once, perhaps twice a week and I feel that she ought to be spending more time on the subject if she’s planning to take it at GCSE,” Jac suggested casually, keeping her tone low.

“The workload will increase significantly in the autumn when GCSE classes start, and right now, the majority of work that the students should be focusing on is revision for their upcoming exams. In less than a fortnight, Evie sits the exam that will almost singlehandedly decide whether she has the opportunity to study biology at GCSE level. I have complete faith in her abilities, but if you feel she ought to be spending more time on the subject then that’s where her attention should be focused.”

Jac nodded satisfactorily, accepting that the man’s incompetence had been somewhat enhanced by Evie’s accounts of his teaching. There truly wasn’t much he could do when he was stuck with a classroom full of teenagers, most of whom couldn’t care less about biology and simply wanted to get out of his class as quickly as possible.

They said their farewells and headed over to Mr Canoli, the last appointment in Evie’s planner.

It was hard for Jac to believe that out of all of Evie’s teachers, her chemistry teacher was the one who had taken issue with her when chemistry was one of the subjects that she most notably excelled in. Fletch had been saying that if he heard a bad word about Evie, he’d start a confrontation and Evie had spent a week begging him not to embarrass her.

Remarkably, he had been so utterly stunned by the mere presence of Jac that he had spoken about Evie as though she was his dearest protégé. Evie had spent the entire five minutes gawping at him as he talked about what a wonderful student she was and how well she was progressing.

The three left his table feeling rather pleased with themselves, and Evie had a smug grin across her face that she couldn’t even try to hide.

On the drive home, Fletch continued to hound Evie sarcastically about how much she’d paid her teachers to be so complimentary. Mikey bit back a laugh, muttering something about being a know-it-all.

“It was only because Jac scares everyone to saying exactly what she wants to hear,” Evie pointed out, elbowing her brother in the ribs as she spoke.

Jac realised in that very moment that a roomful of teachers probably thought of her as stepmother to the four Fletcher children now. Honestly, she should have been a lot more disgraced at the idea but alas, she thought, let them think what they like.


	42. Chapter 42

A quiet night-in was a long sought after privilege. Evie and Mikey were both staying with friends and the youngsters were in bed by 7:30.

They curled up in the sofa and put on a David Attenborough documentary and started to chat about their day. It was hard to believe that they worked in the same building and still each had so little clue about what the other did with their day.

“I can’t believe Serena’s forcing me to take on two F1s. She’s punishing me for what happened with Frieda,” Jac complained.

Fletch laughed at her. She really was taking it personally, and he knew it was entirely Serena’s intention.

The pair of them nattered as middle-aged couples did for a couple of hours, making the most of the freedom to absolutely nothing. Fletch moaned about how much resistance he was facing at work over his new recruitment initiatives, and Jac wondered how anybody could ever say no to him.

Even before, when he had been the infuriatingly jolly presence on Darwin that she tried to avoid all costs, he had been the hardest person to say no to bar Emma alone.

“Just give them the old Fletcher charm and they’ll be throwing money at you,” Jac teased, running her fingers up and down the length of his forearm.

“Sorry to tell you that I save that _particular_ charm for a special few, and I’m not sure you’d be too pleased about me flaunting it around the entire hospital,” he quipped, turning his arm under her touch. “You want another cuppa?”

She shook her head, nestling further into his side so that he wouldn’t stand up, and continued her ministrations. Jac knew he wouldn’t move, wouldn’t break this moment when her affection was so hard to come by, even after all these months.

Something about this moment made her want to put it into a bottle and cork it tight, to keep it safe from withering memories in aging minds. It was so simple and yet it was the most genuinely happy she had been in forever, with her heart at ease and her mind clear of all concern.

“What would you do if I dropped dead tomorrow?”

Jac had asked Joseph this question an age ago and he had answered incorrectly; with his anger. Jac had asked Jonny this question when she had been pregnant with Emma and he had answered falsely; with his sadness.

He furrowed his brow, wondered why on Earth she would ask such a question but knew she wouldn’t appreciate his ramblings and instead, responded concisely:

“I’d tell Emma every story I could remember about you and I’d make damn sure that Darwin didn’t fall apart under whatever second-rate imbecile took the helm.” Fletch answered correctly; with her in mind.

Fletch knew her perhaps better than anybody else ever had. Joseph had empathised with her, and when she did that which he could not comprehend, he left. Jonny had seen only the good in her, and when he had been faced with the ugly truth, he had left. Fletch knew her faults and he held her to account for them, so he had little reason remaining to leave.

Jac shifted slightly, pressing a tender kiss to his jaw and lingering there. Turning his head easily, he found her lips with his own and languished in this rarely-seen Jac Naylor who cuddled out of choice rather than obligation.

“You better not die tonight or I’ll be having some words with ‘im upstairs,” Fletch drawled sarcastically, only for Jac to shut him up the best way she knew how.

She curled her fingers into his hair as she kissed him, longing to consume herself entirely in this moment of divine bliss. It was only the sound of a screaming Ella that pulled her back to reality.

Fletch darted up and headed for the door, halfway up the stairs by the time Jac had processed what was going on. Ella was well and truly into her night terrors stage, she’d woken up crying almost every night for two weeks now and Fletch had gotten into a system for it.

The thought that she was going to have to through this with Emma filled her with dread. Much as she prided herself on being a good mother, it didn’t mean she had magically developed the skill of empathy postnatally.

She turned off the television and headed to the kitchen to do the washing up before heading up to bed. It was getting late and there was no chance Fletch was going to be down anytime soon, he’d stay until she was fast asleep again now.

As she padded lightly past Ella’s bedroom door, she heard the girl’s sniffling and it broke her heart just a little. The kids didn’t feel like hers and she didn’t think they ever would, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t come to care for them deeply in all of the time she had spent with them. They were still a part of her everyday life and she couldn’t help but take into consideration their feelings even subconsciously.

“She’s asleep already,” Fletch whispered as he entered the master bedroom fifteen minutes later to find Jac laid in bed. “Barely had to calm her down, it was over as soon as it started.”

“Poor thing,” Jac mumbled as Fletch kicked off his jeans and hung them over the foot of the bed before climbing in beside her.

Fletch wrapped his arms around her waist, and the two carried a light conversation until Jac heard his breath slacken against her neck and knew he was asleep.

 

 

 


	43. Chapter 43

The new F1s were, as expected, entirely incompetent. It was a Monday morning when they arrived with big smiles on their faces, practically falling over themselves to get on Jac’s good side.

She’d done her best to give them a chance. For three entire hours, she’d answered their questions and she’d ignored their small mistakes, until Dr Walmsley managed to switch off a patient’s heart monitor.

“Don’t let me see you for the rest of your shift. You will report to Ms Petrenko and try not to kill anybody!” Jac bit out at the timid young woman, glaring at her sharply. “Understood?”

Having received a small, frightened nod of agreement, Jac headed for her office with a throbbing pain on her temple.

The other one, she couldn’t remember his name, he seemed somewhat capable. One out of two wasn’t terrible going, even if it was going to give her a hernia to try and run a ward with that _moron_ on it.

Frieda briskly entered the office less than half an hour later with a face like thunder.

“Why do I get stuck with the useless one that you’re trying to get rid of?” the Slav questioned, obviously somewhat embittered that she had been given such a horrendous babysitting task for the day.

“Because you’re the only person left on the ward who won’t tell her what a _great_ job she’s doing, and I am not about to risk getting in trouble with Ms Campbell again after last time, _remember?_ ” Jac retorted, reminding Frieda that there was absolutely nothing Jac couldn’t do without holding that particular incident over her head.

Rolling her eyes, the registrar walked out of the room again without a word.

She had surgery at 3 and somehow, she’d been persuaded to let one of the new F1s observe. Luckily for her, it was a matter of personal choice who got picked so at least she didn’t have to deal with Little Miss Imbecilic in her ear for an hour and a half.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to insert the trunk at the connection the heart itself, rather than in the middle of the artery?” he had questioned with a furrowed brow, paying close attention to Jac’s every move.

“No, it wouldn’t, because that would restrict bypass function and mean that the entire body was starved of blood. She might come out of surgery with a more effectively functioning heart, but she’d be a vegetable with half a dozen failing organs.”

What happened in medical schools these days? Did people just get drunk and mess around for 5 years instead of actually doing any work? Jac could’ve sworn she was never _quite_ that stupid, even as a child.

He was subdued for the rest of the operation, speaking only when spoken to and trying to stay out of Jac’s way as well as he could. It was clear to everybody in the room that she was in no mood to deal with his failures, and nobody could blame her when the other F1 of the day had already proved herself to be even worse.

Finally having finished, Jac left surgery and headed for her office where she took two paracetamol to try and calm the pounding in her head. Today truly wasn’t going in her favour.

Though she wouldn’t admit it to anybody who asked, she felt that it was made even worse by Fletch’s absence. It was his day off and he was making the most of it and steering well clear of the hospital.

There was nothing for her to do for the rest of the shift now, apart from trying not to kill the F1s or let them kill anybody else. She put her feet up on the desk and leaned back in her chair, dialling Fletch’s phone number and waiting for it to ring.

“Hello?” he answered casually, obviously having failed to look at his phone before answering.

“Hi,” Jac responded easily. “You busy?”

“Jac! Nope, not busy, what’s up?”

“Just need to hear about something other than the dreadful day I’m having, how’s things?”

“Oh, nothing exciting. I got some washing done this afternoon, got around to fixing the lock on the bathroom door, Theo’s taking a nap. What was _so_ dreadful about your day?”

She scoffed at him, fully aware that his response to incompetence was to encourage improvement, positive reinforcements _only_.

For ten minutes, she regaled the terrible experience of her day with explicit detail. Even getting the chance to complain to somebody about it was cathartic, and Fletch had become vastly skilled in the art of listening to Jac complain.

“You want me to come in and see if I can’t give them a motivational Fletch speech?” he offered wryly, feeling a little bad for her after the bad hand she’d been dealt with the new staff.

“No, it’s fine. There’s only a couple of hours left of the shift. I’ll see you at home for dinner though, right?” Her tone had been entirely casual but as soon as she realised what she had said, she wished she could swallow her own tongue.

Her mind was running at 100mph, processing what she had just done and what her subconscious had just told her. He had just called Fletch’s house ‘home’.

“Yep, see you at 6 then,” Fletch finished before hanging up the call and leaving Jac to existentialise in peace. _I hadn’t meant it_ , she told herself, _it was just a slip of the tongue._ A Freudian slip that told her precisely what her subconscious mind thought of Fletch and his house… _home._

Whether she liked it or not, this was what she’d always wanted. A home to return to at the end of the day where she felt safe and loved and calm. Fletch’s house was that for her, and it didn’t matter whether she lived there or not. It was an undeniable truth.

Emma already tended to call his place _home,_ she’d probably picked it from Theo and Ella but she said it nonetheless. The only thing that Emma valued in the Naylor household was a real bed, and Fletch had suggested a number of times that they put a real one in Ella’s room, though Jac kept putting it off.

At the end of her shift, with her headache finally beginning to subside, Jac headed home.


	44. Chapter 44

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> told you these would be slowing down and i meant it, i'm beginning to run out of ideas so if there's anything you'd like to see with this then let me know x

It was Tuesday night and the kids had managed to bully Jac and Fletch into taking them all to the cinema to see The Incredibles 2 film. It was a school night, and they normally never would’ve agreed, but Mikey hadn’t gotten in trouble in at least two weeks and Evie had barely left the house amongst all of her revision.

Jac had been thoroughly reluctant. The cinema really wasn’t her scene; she’d been once when she was 14 on a group outing with her care home and had spent an hour and a half having popcorn thrown at the back of her head. That had been enough to tell her that the sofa was a far more comfortable place to watch movies from.

“Can we get popcorn, Dad?” Mikey enthused as they passed the ticket stand.

“Go on then. Just a _small_ one!” Fletch stated firmly as he handed over a fiver and watched his son run off eagerly to queue. Of course, the kids already had pockets full of snacks, primarily to avoid spending a small fortune in the cinema.

The kids had even persuaded Jac to tuck a packet of cheese and onion crisps into her pocket or she’d be moaning the entire film and trying to steal theirs. She rolled her eyes at them before stuffing them in anyway and accepting that she may as well have something to eat.

After three minutes, Mikey came hurrying back to them with a bucket of popcorn as big as his head and a mouthful of it. He led the group of them towards the screens where, in succession, their tickets were torn in half and returned to them.  

Mikey decided that the third row was an acceptable compromise between the youngsters who wanted the front row and the rest of them who wanted the middle. They all filtered down the row with Evie at one end, and Jac and Fletch at the other.

The adverts had already started and Evie and Mikey were watching them eagerly, looking for their next excuse for a family outing. Ella and Emma were organising their sweets between the pair of them, and Theo had already stuffed half a dozen gummy worms into his mouth.

“I can’t believe you persuaded me that this was a fun way to spend my Tuesday evening,” Jac grumbled as she slumped back into her seat.

“Stop complaining. We could be sat listening to the kids argue about what to put on before eventually deciding on Cars for the fortieth time this month,” Fletch pointed out, pulling a KitKat out of his pocket and tearing off the packaging.

Jac reached over and snapped off a small piece before dropping it into her mouth, ignoring the scornful glare she received.

Three adverts later, the opening credits began.

Jac curled her feet up underneath herself, getting comfortable as best she could on the narrow cinema seat. It wasn’t long before her head flopped onto Fletch’s shoulder as she got tired of sitting up straight.

Between the distracting noise of popcorn-crunching and Jac’s general disinterest in the movie, she managed to daydream her way through the entire first half before she was jolted back to focus by the shrieks of Theo, Ella, and Emma.

Her head snapped up, looking at the screen to try and figure out what she had missed though ultimately, she gave up. The first movie had been pretty good, and she would definitely give this one another try once it was out on DVD, but the mere atmosphere made her too fidgety to really pay attention.

Forcing herself to remain quiet and somewhat still for the next forty-five minutes, she was nothing short of relieved when the credits ran. Even though it took another five minutes just to get the kids up and gather up the rubbish, she was just pleased that they could finally head back and she could curl up on the sofa in a comfortable position and pay as much or as little attention to the television as she liked.

“D’you enjoy yourself?” Fletch asked with a smile, wrapping his arm around Jac’s waist as they headed through the foyer.

“I didn’t _not_ enjoy myself. Satisfied?” she answered sweetly as she reached for Emma’s hand and walked between her two favourite people to their car.

Over the months that had passed between them, she had come to accept that the people carrier was something of necessity. She couldn’t stand the thing, and she wouldn’t be caught dead driving it or going anywhere _near_ the hospital in it, but the occasional ride wasn’t going to kill her.

“Shotgun the middle!” Mikey yelled as he tugged open the door and hopped into the seat he deemed to be his. The entire clan piled into the car before they headed for home; Ella babbled on about how she wanted to be Violet and how cool she thought the entire film was.

Everyone seemed to be in a very good mood after the outing, and though she had enjoyed little in the way of the film, the temperament of everybody else in the car was putting a smile on her face. She was never going to be a _fun_ person, but she could at least pretend, for Emma’s sake.

“Straight to bed for _all of you_ , understand?” Fletch ordered as they approached the driveway of the house. “Evie, you too, no studying.”

It was only 8o’clock, and he knew full well that Evie wasn’t going to go to bed, but he’d be damned if she started trying to work on her night off.

“But Dad, I have Maths A on Thursday! Half an hour? I thought we’d be back later than this,” she pleaded, looking at him glumly with a protruding lower lip.

“Let your brain have a rest,” Jac interjected, hoping to diffuse the situation with rationality. “I finish at 4 tomorrow, so I will come over and help you cram if it makes you happy.”

 Evie grinned widely and hopped out of the car without another word.

The two of them stayed in the car for a moment, hands together, sat on Fletch’s knee. No matter the movie, it had been a wonderful evening.


	45. Chapter 45

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this might be the end. it feels like a bit of a conclusion. idk. let me know what u guys think x

She was in the car with Emma when her phone rang. She answered it over the loud speaker, hearing the automated voice tell her that it was a call from Wyvern Women’s Prison. Jac pulled over immediately to the side of the road and grabbed the phone, answering and pulling it to her ear.

“Hello?” A familiar voice started, and it took every ounce of her being not to hang up immediately. “Jac, is that you?”

“What do you want, Fran?” Jac snapped, angry at the fact that she was even being forced to have this conversation. If she didn’t, she knew that she would spend weeks regretting and wondering what would’ve been said.

“I’ve changed. I want to apologise. I was hoping you might come and visit me? I put you on my visitation list a while ago and you’ve already been approved,” Fran offered in that needy, almost crying tone that she used almost all of the time to try and get what she wanted. “I really do want to make things right with you, if you’ll let me. We could be friends. _I_ can help you!”

Jac scoffed at that. There were many things she wanted from Fran Reynolds. On that extensive list, at no point was there any semblance of help.

“I don’t need anything from you, Fran. I want you out of my life, not in it again. You’ve done enough damage. I’m not going to welcome you back into my world,” she responded, and she was surprised with herself for not being crueller. All the words that she had for Fran were the truth, brutal as it may be. “I want to forget we ever even met.”

Fran sounded as though she was crying on the other end of the phone, and it was nothing short of a miracle that Jac managed not to roll her eyes. It was hard to fathom that anybody in the world could be _more_ emotionally manipulative than she had taught herself to be, and some small part of me almost admired it.

“You lost Jasmine, and I had a part in that, I know, Jac, I do. But she was family, and I’m family. I’m all the family you’ve got left. Apart from Emma and I don’t think she’s going to help you to grieve much,” Fran sniffled out and the sincerity in her tone baffled Jac.

Emma was sat in the back seat, asking Jac why they had stopped the car and who she was on the phone to but Jac was ignoring her, shaking her head and shushing her daughter through the rear-view mirror.

“You are _not_ my family, and you never were. You were some desperate little girl who wanted somebody to pay attention to you but nobody does, Fran, nobody does. My sister is dead, and you may as well have killed her,” Jac bit out, ignoring the lump in the back of her throat. “Don’t call me again and take me off your stupid list. You’ll never hear from me again.”

She hung up the phone before Fran had the chance to respond. Emma kicked the back of her mother’s chair, trying to draw her attention.

“MUMMA! Who was on the phone?” she grumbled, on the verge of a tantrum as Jac turned in her chair to face her.

“Nobody important, baby,” Jac answered softly as she stroked Emma’s shoulder. “Home time, I think.”

When they arrived at Fletch’s house, Emma hurried off to find Theo as Jac made her way through to the kitchen to see him buttering bread.

“Alright?” he greeted casually, glancing up as she walked into the room.

“Fran Reynolds called and asked me to go and visit her in prison,” Jac stated blankly as she flopped into a seat at the other end of the table. “I told her where to shove it already, but it was out of nowhere and it felt a bit weird to even hear her voice.”

Fletch dropped the knife down onto the plate as his eyes shot up to look at Jac. She appeared fine, if a little subdued, but he knew that she couldn’t be…not really.

“Do you _want_ to go and see her? I know you said you didn’t, but do you think you need the closure of seeing that she’s never going to be in your life again?” Fletch asked kindly, rounding the table and dropping into the seat beside her.

“Seeing that she’s locked away for now doesn’t mean she won’t worm her way back into my life in a few times. She’s not in there forever, Fletch, she’s not even in there for a very long time. 8 years, that’s as long as I knew Jasmine even existed and I only knew her for less than one of those.”

Everybody knew that Jac Naylor was a forget but never forgive kind of person. She wouldn’t think about somebody for years as long as they weren’t in her life, but the second they cropped up again, every bad thing they had ever done would return to the forefront of her mind and she would hold it against them forever. Fran was better off in prison where Jac couldn’t ruin her life, the prison system was nothing compared to the wrath of Jac Naylor.

 “I don’t want to see her. I want to pretend that she never even existed. The only person from that part of my life that needs to be given a second thought is Jasmine, and I am not going to waste my precious time trying to turn the page on a book which I closed months ago,” Jac finished confidently, letting out a breath she didn’t realise she had been holding.

“Okay,” Fletch answered simply, covering her hand with his own and squeezing it kindly.

Fran Reynolds was not her family, and she never had been. Jasmine was her family. Emma was her family. Fletch was her family. She had what she needed and Fran couldn’t make her doubt that, not anymore.


End file.
